V - Shares and Shareholders. The Long Nineteenth Century of the Bank of Italyby Rosanna Scatamacchia

In Italy as in the rest of Europe, during the nineteenth century the combination of the capitalist institution of the public limited company and government regulation led to the development of banks of issue, the predecessors of today's central banks. This book is a study of the shareholders first of Banca di Genova, then of Banca Nazionale and finally of Banca d'Italia. It is the first systematic research and critique on the vicissitudes of the institution in the nineteenth-century, when it can be said that the role of the shareholders came to an end. It offers both historical reconstruction and thematic analysis, inquiring into the origins of the shareholders' wealth, the reasons for their choice of this investment, and their motivations for increasing, transferring or disposing of their stakes. The evolution of this large and varied shareholder base is treated as a significant phase in the modernization of the Italian economy and society. If the history of a bank of issue cannot be limited to an account of its life as a business organization, neither can it do without a portrait of the "shareholder" as protagonist, as European historiography would suggest. On a more general plane, this account reflects the presence of some of the special traits of Italian history, such as the fragmentation of elites, the pattern of relations between centre and periphery, the difficulties of national unification and, not least, the problems of Italian capitalism.