The Roman Stock Exchange between the 19th and 20th Centuries: A History of the Italian Stock Market

277 Pages·2022·7.761 MB·English

by  Donatella Strangio

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
THE HISTORY OF FINANCE
The Roman Stock
Exchange between
the 19th and
20th Centuries
A History of the
Italian Stock Market
Donatella Strangio
Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance
Series Editors
D’Maris Coffman, Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment, University
College London, London, UK
Tony K. Moore, ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, University of
Reading, Reading, UK
Martin Allen, Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum,
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Sophus Reinert, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, USA
Thestudyofthehistoryoffinancialinstitutions,markets,instrumentsand
concepts is vital if we are to understand the role played by finance today.
Atthesametime,themethodologiesdevelopedbyfinanceacademicscan
provide a new perspective for historical studies. Palgrave Studies in the
History of Finance is a multi-disciplinary effort to emphasise the role
playedbyfinanceinthepast,andwhatlessonshistoricalexperienceshave
for us. It presents original research, in both authored monographs and
edited collections, from historians, finance academics and economists, as
well as financial practitioners.
Donatella Strangio
The Roman Stock
Exchange
between the 19th
and 20th Centuries
A History of the Italian Stock Market
Donatella Strangio
Sapienza Università di Roma
Rome, Italy
ISSN 2662-5164 ISSN 2662-5172 (electronic)
Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance
ISBN 978-3-031-00344-8 ISBN 978-3-031-00359-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00359-2
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Preface I
In his seminal article on the formation of financial centres,1 Charles
Kindleberger observed that in the course of the nineteenth country, in
all industrialized countries, a national financial centre emerged, progres-
sivelyrelegatingcompetingonestoaperipheralrole.Thiscentrecouldbe
thecountry’spoliticalcapital,asinthecase,fortheperiodcoveredbythe
book, of Europe’s largest economies—London in the United Kingdom,
Paris in France and Berlin in Germany; to which could be added, in less
advanced economies, St Petersburg in the Russian empire and Vienna in
theAustro-Hungarianempire.Butinothercountries,thepoliticalcapital
and the financial capital have been two different cities, the obvious case
beingNewYorkintheUnitedStates,butthereareothers,suchasZurich
inSwitzerland(thoughtoacertainextentjointlywithGenevaandBasel),
Montreal in Canada (in competition with Toronto until the latter’s even-
tual predominance) and of course Milan in Italy (though its emergence
took place later than that of London, Paris and even Berlin).
Rome has never been a major financial centre nor did it seriously
compete with Milan for the position of Italy’s financial centre. This is
no reason to neglect its financial history. Because of the relationships
betweenstateandfinance,allpoliticalcapitalsplayaroleintheircountry’s
financial affairs. Moreover, Rome is unique in being Italy’s largest city,
1Charles Kindleberger, ‘The Formation of Financial Centres’, Princeton Studies in
International Finance, 36 (1974), pp. 1–78.
vii
viii PREFACEI
unlike Washington in the United States, Bern in Switzerland or Ottawa
in Canada.
It is interesting to look at Rome from this particular viewpoint.
Donatella Strangio has aptly entitled her book “Capital City”—and not
City of Capital or Capital of Capital, as has been done for London, New
York and other leading financial centres.2 The double meaning of the
word “capital” perfectly describes Rome’s specific position: a capital city
in the political sense of the word, but also a city of some significance as
far as financial markets are concerned.
RatherthanahistoryofRomeasafinancialcentre,DonatellaStrangio
has written a global history of Rome, seen from the perspective of its
Stock Exchange, which was only second to Milan in Italy. Donatella
Strangio has taken a longue durée approach, going back to the pre-
industrial era; she puts Rome in its proper economic, social and political
context,andfullyintegratesitshistorywiththatofItalyandsheprovides
a detailed account of the development of its Stock Exchange, in terms
of organization and rules, as well as securities quoted, with comparisons
with other Italian Stock of Exchanges, primarily Milan.
Donatella Strangio’s book thus clearly fills a gap in the literature—not
only on Italian history but also on international financial history—in a
well-conceived, elegant and scholarly way.
Youssef Cassis
Professor of Economic History
Emeritus
European University Institute
Florence, Italy
2Jerry Coakley and Laurence Harris, The City of Capital. London’s role as a Financial
Centre (London, 1983); Steven H. Jaffe and Jessica Lautin, Capital of Capital. Money,
Banking and Power in New York City, 1784–2012 (New York, 2014); Youssef Cassis,
Capitals of Capital. A History of International Financial Centres (1st ed. Cambridge,
2006).
Preface II
The interest of historiography in the history of Rome, ancient and
modern, is certainly a constant in the panorama of Italian and foreign
studies.However,asiswellknown,thisinterest,fullofideologicalmean-
ings and teleological readings, has undergone an important and decisive
evolution since the publication of the work by Paolo Prodi, (Il sovrano
pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima Età
moderna (Bologna,ilMulino,1982),awatershedintheinterpretationsof
thecity’shistory,fortoolongandunjustlyconsideredasastatic,obsolete,
backward city tout court.
Obviously, it is not possible here to recall in detail the main researches
of the last few decades in the wake of that masterful text—innova-
tive, original and generally solid research from a documentary point of
view—, I must limit myself to remembering how, thanks to these
works, the paradigm of the fragile papal immobility has ended up being
completely dismantled, in particular in relation to the early modern age.
Lessploughed,however,isthefieldofthenineteenthcenturyinRome,
a period still burdened by nationalist and often superficial interpretations
due to the ecclesiastical component that conditioned the reality of the
papalcapitalforsolong.Infact,whiletherewerethosewhotriedtotrace
Rome’s failure to take off internationally precisely to the conditioning
presence of the pontifical see (it was only after its proclamation as the
capitaloftheKingdomofItalythatthecity,finallylaicized,begantobea
normal urban reality), others have instead wanted to underline the links
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x PREFACEII
existing between the collapse of the temporal domination (the breach of
Porta Pia, 20 September 1870) and the start of Catholicism retreating
from the world.
Thebeautifulvolume“RomeCapitalCity”fillsthesegapsandfarfrom
remainingaprisonerofdichotomouscontrasts,tracesthedifficulthistory
ofthecityinabalancedway,addressingitscomplexityandcontradictions
through a completely new perspective and a herald—I am sure—of new
and fruitful interpretative developments.
The goal of the author, Donatella Strangio, consists of a serious and
documented analysis of the evolution of the city through a particular
observatory, that of the Stock Exchange, considered not so much as an
exclusive or absolute protagonist of the financial market, but rather as a
subject and object of the history, certainly economic, but also social and
political, of Rome and the Papal State. In addition, this singular observa-
tory, despite its atypical nature, seems to be valuable for the purposes of
anoverallanalysisofthebehaviourofthelocal,nationalandinternational
executive and entrepreneurial classes.
Focussing on six key historical moments, the book starts from the
decline in the Pope’s temporal power—the aforementioned breach of
Porta Pia-: an epochal event, here linked to previous institutional and
social transformations as well as to the level of nineteenth–twentieth
centuryinternalandexternalrelations.Asthesubtitleoftheworkexplic-
itly states (Structure and activity of the Rome stock market between the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a history of the Italian stockexchange),
the periodization adopted by the Author is also unconventional.
Starting from 1821—and nevertheless attentive to some important
pre-existing joints—Strangio examines the dynamics triggered by the
CommerceRegulationstoclarifyhowtheRomanstockexchangereacted
with respect to the Risorgimento and subsequently to the establishment
of the Kingdom of Italy. Embracing both the liberal period and that of
the “Belle époque”, the study finally reaches the First World War (as
the author recalls, it was with the Great War that the “long nineteenth
century”endedandanewsystemofcontactsandofexchangesappeared,
thanks to which the Eternal City abandoned the welfare model that had
distinguished it most in previous centuries), and then proceeds to the
following decades. This long-term approach allows Donatella Strangio to
convincingly demonstrate how, far from confining it to a more restricted
space, becoming the Italian capital greatly facilitated the evolution of the
urban development trends in Rome, finally released from the nefarious