Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

Banche e ferrovie in Piemonte 175
road networks, with the assistance, typically, of minimum revenue guarantees, or of outringht subsidies, or of both. Most of the Continent fell between the well developed and the undeveloped, and so the most common feature of the period was the fSnancial group which sought to combine the amalgamation of existing, profitable tirunk lines with the pledge to undertake the construction of the railroads along the rest of a country's principal routes. Wherever extensive new construction was involved, as in most cases, huge financial resources were vital. Furthermore, in many cases amalgamation and. expansion entadled the purchase of centrally placed, functioning state-owned networks, which again required immense funds of the groups competing to win the prizes of comprehensdve national net­works. For the most powerful, visionary, and ambitious groups, the stakes were even greater, for they were attempting to win control of systems which spanned the enti-re continent, from east to west and north to south. This was the setting then, which evoked the monumentai and historic arivalry between James de Rothschild aaid his one-time proteges, the brothers Emile and Isaac Pereire, and their innovative joint-stock investment bank, the Société Generale de Crédit Mobilier.
In 1855 the simmering rivalry between Rothschild and the Pereires boiled over and spilled well beyond the borders of France. The battle was fought with particular intensity in the Habsburg domaàns, which meant the richest part of Italy as well, and in Switzerland, the fulcrum of Eiuropean transit traffic. Southern Italy too attracted the special interest of the rivai French groups because of their particular fascination with the Mediterranean; they and the English were eager to see the development of coastal roads which could speed goods and mail the length of the jpendnsula, from the heel of the boot to the base of the Alps.42)
Cavour and Bolmida were quick to exploit the Rothschild-Pereire rivalry. Cavour's primary concerai in the second half of 1855 remained the network in Savoy and the transalpine route between Susa and Modane. In 1853 the French Compagnia Vittorio Emanuele was chartered to have a capital of fifty milldon lire and budld a network of more than 200 kilometers, but in the slump of 1854 it fell short of its obligations and rdsked litigation before Cavour consented to a temporary respite, accepted by Parliament as well. The company was permitted to reduce its capital to only fifteen mdllion lire and confine its constiruction to a single trunk of only eighty-four kilometers, but after two years it would have to choose between selling out to the state and reassuming its entire originai concessione3)
*2) Gille, Les investissements, pp. 163-167, the same author's Histoire de la Maison Rothschild, Tome II (1848-1870) (Geneva, 1967), pp. 93-216, 230-241, 301-342, and Gille, ed,, Procès-verbaux de la Réunion Financière (1858[sic]-1860) , in Histoire des entreprises, mraiber 9 (May 1962): 14-16, 18-22, 24-25; Atti della Commissione d'Inchiesta sull'esercizio delle ferrovie italiane, part II, 2 vola. (Rome, 1881), 1:9-11; Cameron, France, pp. 133-144, 153-157, 204-208, 216-219, 223-246; Clapham, Economìe Development, pp. 149-150; and Arthur Lewis Dunham, Industriai Revolution in France, 1815-1848 (New York, 1955), pp. 49-84.
43) AP, 37:1537-1555; De Biase, pp. 111-113; Romeo, 2:733-734; Gille, Les Investissements, pp. 153-155; Cavour to Alessandro Bixio, 29 Oct. 1854, and to Laffitte,