Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

German Entrepreneurs and the Industrialization of Milan
A comparison of this printing activity with the largest in Europe
underlines Kramer e Compagni’s good position at international level
(see Table 9.3). At a time when mechanization had not yet reached
this sector and differences in productivity usually reflected different
qualities in the end products, the Milanese venture produced a relevant
quantity of middle-range cottons, less refined and rich than the
French ones, tailored to Lombardy’s market. Their poorer quality,
owing to the government requirement to print pieces produced locally
instead of using the better Swiss ones, was offset by lower prices
which perfectly targeted the local consumer. Lombardy had successfully
employed an import substitution policy, and yet the exports of
Kramer e Compagni, amounting to 14,079 libbre in 1784, 48 demonstrate
its capacity to compete in terms of price and productivity even
outside the protected home market. Kramer e Compagni thus represents
a successful foreign venture capital intervention quite typical of
the end of the eighteenth century in a Europe characterized by segmented
markets and an eager and ever growing demand for cheaper
products. This success was the result of the operation of mercantile
and manufacturing networks capable of bringing together skills in
the form of human, managerial, and financial capital where and
when they had the best chances of being profitably employed. 49
cerie, tele di cotone stampate e da stamparsi, ossiano mussoline’, 15 Nov.
1781. On this and all that concerns the cotton sector in Lombardy see
Zaninelli, L’industria del cotone.
48 ‘Nota e Peso del Mussolo stampato spedito fuori stato da Kramer e Comp.
nel corrente anno 1784’, ASM, Commercio, parte antica, Cartella 252.
49 The existence of mercantile networks created a single international market
for factors of production alongside that for goods. Sidney Pollard remarks:
‘Europe was not a single market merely for commodities: over much of the
nineteenth century it also in effect became a single market for capital, skill,
enterprise, ideas, and technological knowledge.’ Pollard, ‘Industrialization
and the European Economy’, 172.
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