Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

AN ITALIAN BANK IN THE RAILROAD BOOM OF THE 1850s
Iniroduction. That the Kingdom of Sardinia experienced an economie boom of striking dimensions during the Cavourian decade is well known, but many of the particulars have yet to be examined closely and several questions remain open for discusison. What were the relative contributions of foreign and domestic agents of economie transformation? How suddenly did a new economie edifice spring up? How stable were its undeiinnings? What does the Kingdom of Sardinia's experience suggest about models of economie development and the timing and pace of the transformation from relative economie backwardness to modernity? What implications does it have for our understanding of the dynamics of Italy's politicai and economie development in the decades following unifications?
The history of a joint-stock bank's involvement in railroad promotion and investment sheds considerable light on the characteristics of the Kingdom of Sardinia's economie development in the last decades before unification. It reveals that, contrary to the traditional view, locai rather than foreign capital and initiative led the way. It highlights the importami elements of continuìty from the thirties and forties to the fifties and suggests that the foundations of development were solidly grounded in the subsoil of the Kingdom's Italian provinces. The Kingdom of Sardinia's experience supports the view that there were various paths to modernity in nineteenth century Europe and that northern Italy conformed most closely to a northern and western European model of graduai transfor­mation, rather than to an East European or Mediterranean one of relatively sudden and dramatic change. It further suggests that we cannot, for the mere sake of convenience, begin the study of modem Italy's economie development in 1861 to do so is misleading and obscures the dynamics of united Italy's politicai as well as economie development.
The bulk of the discussion which follows is divided into three sections. The first focuses on the various factors which accounted for the timing of the appearance of the Cassa del Commercio e dell'Industria, Credito Mobiliare, Italy's first joint-stock investment bank. The second examines in some detail the development of railroads in the Kingdom of Sardinia through the 1850s, and the third looks in particular at the part that the Cassa del Commercio played in that development.