Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

German Entrepreneurs and the Industrialization of Milan
business. Nathan Rothschild established his bank in London in 1808
and left Manchester for good in 1811. In 1811 Heinrich Mylius also
replaced his former subsidiary Mylius & Aldebert with Enrico Mylius
e Compagni, 69 a banking establishment dedicated to silk trading.
In fact, throughout the years of French rule, the silk trade had
grown steadily, while smuggling to England guaranteed enormous
profits. Some years later, an economic encyclopedia candidly admitted:
In the Lombardo–Venetian Kingdom, including the Italian
Tirolo, in good years, the annual production of silk amounts to
4,800,000 local pounds, or 3,600,000 Prussian pounds, which,
calculating a minimum price of 21 francs to the pound, is
worth 100,008,000 francs or 28,800,000 Reichsthaler. Twoninths
of this production go to local manufactories, the remain -
ing seven-ninths are exported raw to Germany, England,
France, etc. During the time of Napoleon’s Con tin ental System,
the English price for Lombardy silk was 50 to 80 francs. 70
In the first decade of the nineteenth century, silk smuggling thus
provided a profit on the normal price of between 150 and 400 per
cent. In only a few years Mylius amassed a remarkable fortune. In
1808 he was able to buy a new headquarters for his firm at no. 1768
Via Clerici. 71 The comptoir was on the ground floor, along with all the
offices, administrative spaces, and a fumoir containing 162 pictures.
The first and the second floors were occupied by reception rooms,
spaces for entertaining, and the private rooms of the firm’s partners
and dependants. 72 The cost of this remarkable building, situated in
the centre of the Milanese bankers’ and merchants’ district, was
148,000 Italian lire, a sum that clearly reflects the firm’s success during
this turbulent period. Notwithstanding the suspicion of smuggling,
a police report of 1809 on Mylius and one of his assistants,
Hector Steinhausser, stated:
69 Notifying Document, 1 July 1811, ACCM, registro ditte, ad nomen.
70 Johann Georg Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Enziklopädie (Berlin,
1773–1858), ad vocem ‘Seide’.
71 Notifying Protocol, 27 Sept. 1808, ACCM, registro ditte, ad nomen.
72 Baasner (ed.), I Mylius-Vigoni, 11.
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