Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

German Entrepreneurs and the Industrialization of Milan
rule. 78 And yet Napoleon privileged cotton printers with all possible
state concessions. As a Milanese scientific journal later wrote: ‘Napo -
leon conferred upon Oberkampf the Legion of Honour, saying to him
that the war he was waging on the English was a good war.’ 79 Faced
with difficulties in providing the supplies his firm needed, Kramer
obtained permission in April 1808 to import them from Switzerland,
a rare exception to the Continental System. 80 None the less, after the
decrees of 1806 and 1807, Kramer had to reorganize his manufactories
and change his network of affiliation. He did so by providing
Milan with a new international link with a centre for manufacturing
innovation: Mulhouse.
The original Kramer e Compagni ceased trading in 1807, 81 losing
all former limited partners and Hartmann who, as we have seen, set
up on his own with his sons (see Table 9.2). Kramer immediately refounded
Kramer e Compagni with new partners and a statutory life
of ten years. 82 From then on, Kramer’s limited partner was the same
Frères Merian that had profited so heavily from smuggling. After
1806, it was looking for alternative investment opportunities. Instead
of becoming a bank like other merchant houses, this Basel enterprise
transformed its Verlagssystem into a network of interrelated participation
in industrial ventures. It acted, for example, as a limited partner
in the most important cotton printing enterprise in Mulhouse,
Dollfus, Mieg & Compagni, and in the re-founded Kramer e Compagni
(see Table 9.5).
The new network was fostered by cross-participation and human
capital migrations. Dollfus, Mieg & Compagni itself became Adam
Kramer’s second limited partner, while Rodolphe Grossmann, once
78 Letter from Kramer e Compagni to the municipality, 21 July 1796, ABT,
Fondo Famiglie, Cartella 815.
79 ‘La storia delle stoffe di cotone stampate’, Annali Universali di Statistica,
economia pubblica, geografia, storia, viaggi e commercio, 21 (Sept. 1849), 271.
80 The cotton sector in Milan under French rule is described by A. Moioli,
‘L’economia lombarda fra tradizione e innovazione: Le manifatture’, in
Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Antonio Lazzarini (eds.), Veneto e Lombardia tra
rivoluzione giacobina ed età napoleonica: Economia, territorio, istituzioni (Milan,
1992), 179–244.
81 As a limited partnership, Kramer e Compagni ceased to exist as soon as its
partners changed. This change is documented in ASM, Notarile, 49390.
82 Ibid.
277