Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

164
Paul Martin Howell
the Continent .>
The Kingdom of Sardinia lagged behind as the government rejected Genoese proposals for joint-stock commercial banks of note issue in 1832 and 1838.12) Charles Albert's government timidly broke the ice in 1840 when it permitted the establishment in Annecy of a very small joint-stock discount and deposit bank, with no note issue capability, which barely survived the decade.13) A decisive step forward was finally taken in 1843 when Genoese capitalists were permitted to float the Banca di Genova, a joint-stock commercial bank of note issue modeled on the Banque de Marseille, which had been established eight years earlier. The Turni bureaucracy introduced a variety of modifications to the bank's charter Which immediately gave it the imprint of national tradition.14> The Banca di Genova was joined in 1847 by the Banca di Torino, which was modeled after it and had an identica! capital base of four million new Piedmontese lire (equal to four million French francs).15)
Until 1848 every proposai for a new departure in the Kingdom of Sardinia was subjected to the ponderous scrutiny of a cautious, paternalistic, and titled bureaucracy. With the granting of the Statuto and the establish­ment of a parliamentary regime, the way was cleared for much faster action on a wide variety of issues and an environment quite favorable to would-be promoters of joint-stock enterprises was created. The potential
U) Generally, Howell, pp. 31-37; J. H. Clapham, Economie Develo pment of France and Germany, 1815-1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1968), pp. 125-129; Rondo Caraeron and others, Banking in the Early Stages of Induslrialization (New York, London, and Toronto, 1967), chapters two and three; Rondo Cameron, France and the Economie Development of Europe, 1800-1914 (Princeton, 1961), pp. 107, 119-124; Bertrand Gille, La Banque en France au XIX siede (Geneva, 1970), part one; Pierre Des Essars, A History of Banking in the Latin Nations , in A History of Banking in Alt the Leading Nations, voi. 3 (New York, 1896), esp. pp. 231-235, 267; James William Gilbart, A Practical Treatìse on Banking (New York, 1851), esp. pp. 259ff; J. ' van Dil-len, ed., History of the Principal Public Banks (The Hague, 1934), esp. the articles by van Dillen, Heckscher, and de Jong on the banks of Amsterdam, Sweden, and the Netherlands, respectively; Richard Rudolf, Banking and Industrialization in Austria-Hungary (Cambridge, London, New York, and Melbourne, 1976), pp. 68-69; and Giuseppe Di Nardi, Le banche di emissione italiane nel secolo XIX (Turin, 1953), p. 85.
*2) Rossi and Nitti, l:xliii-xlvii, 4, 22n, 40n-41n; and Giorgio Doria, Investimento e sviluppo economico a Genova alla vigilia della prima guerra mondiale, 2 vols. (Miìan, 1969), l:60ff.
13) Rossi and Nitti, l:xlvii and 2:769-770.
W) Rossi and Nitti, l:xlv-xlvi, lix-Ixì, 3-7, 11-36, 40, 44ff, 111-127, 171-180, 235; Doria, 1:81-85; Di Nardi, pp. 10, 13-17, 38-39; Vincenzo Pautassi, Gli istituti di credito e assicurativi e la borsa in Piemonte dal 1831 al 1861 (Turin, 1961), pp. 307ff; and Riccardo Bachi, L'economia e la finanza delle prime guerre per l'indipendenza d'Italia (Rome, 1930), pp. 20-21.
19 Rossi and Nitti, 1:118-128, 131-165; Rosario Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, 3 vols. (Rome and Bari, 1969, 1977, and 1984); 2:177-183 and passim.; Leopoldo Marchetti, Cavour e la Banca di Torino (1847-1850), con documenti inediti (Milan, 1952), pp. 1-38 and the documenls which follow; and Pautassi, pp. 318-323,