Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

Banche e ferrovie in Piemonte 161
Economie growth, administrative liberalization, and the initiation of banking modernization. What factors accounted for the timing of the Cassa del Commercio's appearance in the Kingdom of Sardinia? In general terms, they fall into two categories, one of relatively long-term factors, the other of more immediate ones. The first category includes economie change and increased commerciai activity in the decades preceding unification; a policy of graduai commercial and administrative liberalization dating from the middle of the 1830s; and a specific institutional preparation in the 1840s. The second category includes the general politicai changes wrought by the introduction of constitutional government in 1848; the logie of the banking and monetary reforms enacted during the period of revolution and warfare between 1848 and 1850, both within and without the Kingdom of Sardinia; and the acknowledged needs of business in general, and of railroad companies and their promoters in particular, in a period of incipient boom. The factors which prepared the way for the appearance of the Cassa del Commercio e dell'Industria were, naturally, interdependent and mutually reactive. Long-term economie growth and increased commercial activity put pressure on the regime to liberalize commercial and administrative policies. Liberalization then further boosted economie change and growth, creating new pressures for institutional change and innovation.
Ali of the developments in the Kingdom of Sardinia took place within the broader European context. That context had definite politicai and diplomatic dimensions, as well as strictly economie ones, and the importance of their interaction must not be overlooked in any general analysis of nineteenth century European economie development. The kingdom's economie ipotential was heavrly shackled by the Restoration government, in a manner typical of those arrayed behind Austria's leadership. However, the steady reassertion of Turin's traditional rivalry with Vienna helped to rekindle interest in reforms which could stimulate economie development. The July Monarchy raised what appeared to be a socially and politically viable liberal alternative for the Continent, one which could provide access to the kind of economie progress so manifest in England, and then in Belgium. Railroads in particular symbolized that progress, and with the railroad carne the joint-stock company and the commercial bank of note issue. Hence, they moved together across the Continent in successive, progressively bigger and more extensive booms, the first of which occurred in the middle of the 1830s.
Economie statistics for the Kingdom of Sardinia are quite sketchy, but those which exist reveal an unmistakable trend of growth between the end of the Napoleonic period and the proclamation of the new Kingdom of Italy. They are bolstered by qualitative evidence testifying to the spread of improved techniques in agriculture and industry.D
J) Generally, see Paul Martin Howell, Capitulism in the Risorgimento: Joint Stock Banking and Economie Development in the Kingdom of Sardinia, 1943-1859 , (Ph. D. diss.. University of California, Berkeley, 1983), pp. 11-29.