Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

186
Paul Martin Howell
The pattern with banking innovation was similar to that with rail-roads. The Kingdom of Sardinia lagged somewhat behind many of its neighbours initially, again, more because of the reticence of the government than because of the incapacity or timidity of its entrepreneurs and capx-talists. Institutionally, if not functionally, the gap was closed to ali intents and purposes in the 1840s. In the 1850s, the kingdom's business and politicai leaders were fieely attuned to the banking lessons of recent history and to the latest developments in banking elsewhere in the capitalist West. As a result, they quickly fashioned a joint-stock banking system as advanced institutionally and organizationally as any in the world. Direct foreign intervention played no role. The only specific contributions of foreign expertise were the charter of the Banque de Marseille, the model for that of the Banca di Genova, and some eaarly advice which the Genoese bank's officers solicited from their colleagues in Marseille. It was the common European economie culture of the day which provided the general guidance needed by business and politicai leaders in the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The appearance of the Cassa del Commercio e dell'Industria, its assurnption of a leading role in railroad promotion and investment, and ifes evolution as a full-fledged investment bank, ali took place within a general European context of rapid adaptation to the lessons of 1847-1849 and the needs of <radlroad finance, and within the specific context of the politicai, institutional, and economie development of the Kingdom of Sar­dinia. The fame of the Pereires' Crédit Mobrlier certainly helped to prepare the general environment for the final stage of the Cassa del Commercio's formai institutional evolution, but the genesis of the Italian bank preceded the appearance of the Crédit Mobilier and its involvement with railroads was a foregone conclusion right from the beginning. Simiiarly, French capital and the financial .rivalry centered in Paris provided the means and the immediate occasion for the massive capital increase which accompanied the Cassa del Commercio's formai adoption of investment bank attributes, but the Italians were -merely taking advantage of the situation in Paris to further their own ambitions and designs. Those ambitions and designs had been formulated independently of French capital and their pursuit and fulfillment were by no means dependent on the assistance of French capital; only their scale and the time-frame envdsioned for their realization were. Ironically, it was the massive scale of announced foreign assistance and the fame of Rothschild which precipitated the Cassa del Commercio's speculative overextension and undermined its solid financial positìon, with negative consequences for Ligure-Piedmontese capitalism on the morrow of unification.
The discussion in the preceding pages touched only briefly on the larger dimensions of economie change and development in the Kingdom of Sardinia, but it was enough to suggest that the kingdom's striking
63-64, 80-82, 115-116, 171-176, 378, 391-392, 581-583; AP, 28:1728, 37:1544-1554, 49:1111, 1119, 1135, 1165, 1170, 1176; Guderzo, p. 75; and, for fuller discussion, Howell, pp. 165-170.