Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

German Entrepreneurs and the Industrialization of Milan
sters, thanks to their mechanical and chemical knowledge, set up a
silk manufactory, operated by water power, that was seen as a model
throughout northern Italy, and was imitated exactly in Prussia. 105
This would have been impossible without the merging of venture
capital of merchant origin and technological and scientific skills: the
trademark of the innovative capability of international networks.
The presence of immigrant entrepreneurs and merchants made
Milan a hub of international networks as well as a centre of innovation
and industrial excellence at European level. After half a century
of technological transfer from abroad, the Mylius family and Antonio
Kramer reversed the flow of innovation and exported locally developed
technology to far away Prussia.
Entrepreneurial Migrations and Economic Development
The silk manufactory in Boffalora and the roller printing manufactory
in la Pace were the first innovative ventures set up by German
entrepreneurs in Milan, and had to be self-financed or completely
financed by foreign capital. But soon, the ‘examples of capacity and
entre preneurship’ 106 set by people such as Adam Kramer and Hein -
rich Mylius meant that the intellectual republic gathered round innovative
initiatives grew larger and larger. Thanks to the Napo leonic
reforms, never completely reversed by the subsequent Austrian res -
tor ation, this republic gained visibility and received huge capital
inflows from income redistributions as a result of the economic disorder
produced by military and economic wars. Thus from the 1820s
onwards, when Carlo and Antonio Kramer, Heinrich Mylius, and
French or Swiss entrepreneurs proposed new ventures, they never
again had to resort completely to foreign capital, invariably finding
eager investors amongst local noblemen and merchants. By this time
the Milanese mercantile class was capable of financing insurance
companies, the textile and mechanical sectors, sugar refineries, and
the first railway lines. Only the setting up of a joint-stock bank,
105 Johann Georg Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie oder allgemeines
System der Land-, Haus-, und Staats-Wirtschaft: in alphabetischer
Ordnung, 242 vols. ( Berlin, 1773–1858), clii, 398.
106 Cattaneo, Notizie culturali e civili, p. xcviii.
285