Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

German Entrepreneurs and the Industrialization of Milan
Cotton Printing and German Entrepreneurial Migrations to Lombardy
By the second half of the eighteenth century, Milan had firmly established
itself as the centre of trade routes uniting German and Italian
states. ‘The north German merchant’, a history of world trade stated
in 1860
descended into Italy by three routes. The first went from
Bavaria and Swabia over the Tyrolean Alps . . . to Lombardy.
Both the other routes went from Milan over the Swiss Alps; the
western one along Lake Maggiore, starting at Locarno . . . to
Lucerne and from there to Basel; the eastern route went via
Lake Como, from Novate and Riva . . . to Lake Constance. The
eastern Swiss road and Tyrolean road were linked by many
crossroads. 30
All these were major transit routes for the north–south European
trade. 31 Quite naturally, movements of goods along them were followed
by migrations of merchants and entrepreneurs. The flourishing
silk trade along the two lakeside routes between Milan and the
most important Swiss cities, particularly Zurich, 32 brought Swiss capital
and entrepreneurs into Lombardy’s silk sector. 33 Swiss merchant–manufacturers
thus secured their own silk supply, setting up
local Verlagssystem networks, or acquiring possession of, or silent
capital participation in, throwing mills. These are classic examples of
international vertical integration justified by the volatility of the silk
market.
30 Adolf Beer, Allgemeine Geschichte des Welthandels (Vienna, 1860), 237–8, my
trans.
31 John Bowring, Bericht an das englische Parlament über den Handel, die Fabriken
und Gewerbe der Schweiz (Zurich, 1837), 168–9.
32 On this, see the report sent by Konrad von Muralt to John Bowring for the
English Parliament. Bowring, Bericht an das englische Parlament, 148–9.
33 For the case of the Swiss presence in the silk sector of Bergamo, see Maria
G. Girardet and Thomas Soggin, Una presenza riformata a Bergamo: La
Comunità Cristiana Evangelica nel corso di due secoli (Bergamo, 2007); and
Cinzia Martignone, ‘La Comunità Evangelica di Bergamo, 1807–1848,
1848–1880’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 120 (1994), 305–50; and ACME, 2 (May–
Aug. 1996), 17–70.
259