Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MONIKA POETTINGER
migration. This phenomenon proved to be so widespread that John
Rae could affirm: ‘It is to the wars springing out of the French revolution,
and the interruption to European commerce that they occasioned,
that the first rise of many manufactures in different parts of
the old and new world, which are now in a very prosperous condition,
is to be traced.’ 74
Cotton was no exception. In this manufacturing sector the raw
material became scarce and precious. Securing the cotton supply was
one of the main problems of the huge economic area under French
rule. Entirely new routes had to be developed, mainly to the East
through Italy, and new cotton-producing regions emerged. As we
have already seen, the extended Mylius network, like many Swiss
merchant houses, invested in new production facilities near Naples,
where cotton was grown. 75 Giulio, the only son of Heinrich Mylius,
frequently travelled to the south of Italy on business, but the trade
with Naples, Sicily, and Malta, and through them with the East, was
soon delegated to a branch of Enrico Mylius e Compagni set up for
this purpose in Genoa. The network of the Hartmann family, whose
production facility was in Milan, created its own supplying branch in
Naples under the direction of Johann Paul’s oldest son, Carlo. 76
Trieste became another hub for cotton trading and was therefore the
destination of frequent business trips undertaken by members of the
Hartmann and Mylius families. Trade flourished and consequently
the networks of the Mylius and Hartmann families expanded.
Adam Kramer, for his part, had his own problems with his
Milanese firm. Heavy taxation 77 and unrest among his workers ob -
liged him to close his Cavalchina factory in the first years of French
74 John Rae, Statement of Some New Principle (Boston, 1834), ch. 2.
75 On this see D. L. Caglioti, ‘Imprenditori evangelici nel Mezzogiorno dell’
Ottocento’, Archivi e Imprese, 8/16 (1997), 245–81; id., ‘Minoranze e rivoluzione:
I protestanti stranieri nel Mezzogiorno del 1848’, Passato e Presente,
59 (2003), 37–61.
76 The only documents relating to the Hartmann family in Milanese archives
are in the Archivio di Stato di Milano, Albinaggio parte moderna, Cartella 52,
and Archivio storico della Biblioteca Trivulziana di Milano, fondo Famiglie,
ad nomen.
77 ABT, Fondo Famiglie, Cartella 815.
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