Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MONIKA POETTINGER
the general partner of Grossmann & Compagni (later transformed
into Dollfus, Mieg & Compagni), became director of Kramer’s new
manufactory in Milan, la Pace. 83 The renewed channelling of Swiss
merchant capital, the immigration of managerial capital, and adherence
to an international network meant that Kramer was again able
to transfer the latest production processes to Lombardy. The new
facility, set up thanks to an injection of capital and Grossmann’s
expertise, included a roller printer and several other mechanical
devices. So extraordinary was the factory of la Pace that it was publicly
held up as an example of modernization by the Kingdom of
Italy’s Minister of the Interior in 1808. 84 Mechanization and networking
were thus the response of Continental cotton printers to the disruptions
caused by Napoleonic rule. Supply problems, modernization,
and England’s growing technological advantage were their
main concerns, 85 while they set up linkages and business connections
against the competition. This networking created a Europe-wide
intellectual republic comprising managers, manufacturers, merchant
houses, and the first professional chemists. 86
For example, on two different occasions, in 1789 and 1809, Ober -
kampf’s nephews visited the major printing establishments around
Basel and in Mulhouse, the manufactories of Koechlin, Hofer, and
Dollfus-Mieg. 87 This cooperative behaviour was possible because
Oberkampf had himself been an apprentice in Koechlin, Schmalzer e
Compangi in 1756, before working in the Cottin manufactory and
then establishing his own firm. In the following century Antonio, the
son of Adam Kramer, could freely visit and study printing works in
Switzerland, France, and England thanks to the networks created by
his father and his own scientific education.
83 Elisabeth Albrecht-Mathey, The Fabrics of Mulhouse and Alsace 1750–1800
(Leigh-on-Sea, 1968), 19–20.
84 Archivio e Biblioteca dell’Accademia delle Arti Lettere e Scienze (hereafter
AAALS), Processo verbale dell’attribuzione de’ Premj, Milan 1808.
85 The data on Oberkampf and Dollfus-Mieg, reported in Table 9.3 for the
years round 1804, compared with the productivity of other cotton printers, in
particular Peel, are evidence enough.
86 A. Neito-Galan, ‘Networks and Peripheries: Jean-Francois Persoz (1805–
1868) and the Republic of Chemist-Dyers’, Revue de la Maison Francaise
d’Oxford (2003), 33–50.
87 Chapman and Chassagne, European Textile Printers, 142–4.
278