Tracing the Connections of Transnational Financial Players with a Peripheral Country: Some Evidence from the South of Italy Over the First Globalization

We analyze some case studies stemming from the analysis of the dynamics of the international relations through which the South of Italy was integrated into the first wave of financial globalization. Our analysis shows how the construction and evolution of complex business and financial relationships networks were functional to (more or less known) international financial players to adapt to the evolutionary trends in the international credit markets and expand their business influence from the core countries of Europe toward peripheral countries. We follow the networks of some international business actors/groups already involved in business projects in pre-unitarian Italian states, and we show how their progressively expanding relational strategies worked to successfully connect the newly established international banks—Crédit Mobilier, Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC), Société Générale, Crédit Lyonnays, Paribas—to a vast Mediterranean area, between Italy, France, and Spain. The case studies analyzed exemplify the role that financial and business networks played in the shaping of nineteenth-century global financial capitalism as well as highlight the funding dynamics that led foreign capital toward peripheral countries during the first globalization.