Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MONIKA POETTINGER
Personal ties between former employer and employees, those of
Ober kampf like those of Kramer, Grossmann, and Hartmann, merged
into international networks of technological knowledge, an evolution
of the Verlagssystem that became a unique source of innovation and
capital diffusion in nineteenth-century Europe. The faith implicit in
these ties remained binding over time, often generated international
capital investments, spread innovation, and always decreased the
impact of competition at times of economic uncertainty. Techno -
logical networks, then, like merchant networks, were a source of
social capital. Both were equally important in triggering entrepreneurial
migrations and fostering the mobility of productive factors.
Through the operation of all these networks, the European economy
acquired the capacity to adapt to sudden and unforeseeable institutional
and political changes with a high degree of flexibility. Not only
were trade routes shifted, new mercantile hubs created, and new
markets opened, but production facilities were delocalized, factors of
production moved, and technologies perfected and diffused. The
growing economic activity and innovation on the Continent between
the eighteenth and the nineteenth century was mainly due to these
‘entrepreneurial networks’.
Education, Science, and Technological Innovation
Adam Kramer’s response to uncertainty was networking and innovation,
a trait common to all those technicians who, in the secular
process of European industrialization, left their countries of origin to
migrate to other locations and set up their own manufactories.
Technical knowledge was equally precious to governments and in -
vest ors, and formed the personal capital upon which these young
men built their fortunes. A love of science and a keen eye for its
industrial use were thus a legacy which men like Adam Kramer left
to the younger generation. A scientific education soon became an
indispensable tool, along with the traditional commercial apprenticeship,
in shaping merchants and manufacturers. Schooling had to
adjust to this new perceived need. Innovation was thus transferred
from manufacturing to the education sector, which was still largely
under religious control.
Giulio Mylius and Antonio Kramer both attended the Privat-
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