This study has analyzed the territorial and financial power of the Casa di San Giorgio up to the early decades of the sixteenth century. It has shown how, during the Sforza’s dominion over Genoa in the 1460s, some internal observers feared that San Giorgio could take possession of the whole Commune of Genoa. It has also presented Niccolò Machiavelli’s opposite view—that San Giorgio was a well-organized institution and better suited to rule than the corrupt Commune. Finally, it has described the fortunes of San Giorgio’s model from 1602 to 1720, briefly touching on the end of the eighteenth century.
In the first two parts, I focused on the financial and territorial power of San Giorgio, showing how it acquired privileges and rights that had formerly pertained to the Commune of Genoa and how conflicts arose with the Commune. Part III compared two analyses by the Commune’s financial experts with that of Machiavelli. All three identified San Giorgio’s territorial power as its main characteristic, because it was through territorial occupation that San Giorgio attempted to take over the Commune of Genoa. Two Genoese observers wrote explicitly that two regna (kingdoms) or dominions existed in Genoa. They also maintained that San Giorgio had to be limited—while according to Machiavelli, there was a possibility that San Giorgio would take possession of the whole Commune. Part IV described how San Giorgio’s power was known in the Netherlands, England, and France during the period that several important financial and economic institutions were founded.
A large part of the influence of San Giorgio’s model came from Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, VIII, 29. Not only did it appear in pamphlets that discussed the foundation of various institutions—whether critically or positively—but also it features in a text of John Law: the founder of the Mississippi Company. Furthermore, it seems like an echo of the passage is embedded in Buzanval’s text describing the foundation of the VOC. I have considered the fortunes of Machiavelli’s passage along with practical knowledge about San Giorgio, including that of John Law, who held accounts at San Giorgio. In following San Giorgio’s fortunes, the research has explored the past in two directions: it has looked at how the historiography compared San Giorgio to the business corporations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (VOC, Bank of England, and the Mississippi Company) while looking for the same comparison in the sources of these companies. The two views meet: it is possible to follow the older sources chronologically forward to the later historiography and to go from the historiography back to the sources.
Sometimes sources and historiography meet, such as in the case of the first biography of John Law by W. Gray, which was published close to the foundation of the Mississippi Company. For the VOC, the distance between the sources and the historiography is wider. The text of Ferdinando Galiani is the closest known reference to the VOC, but it occurs in the eighteenth century, well after the VOC’s foundation. As I proceeded with the study of later institutions such as the Mississippi Company, I realized that the line between the sources and the historiography becomes less clearly defined, as texts we might define as “sources” coincide with the historiography. Pursuing a type of archaeology of financial institutions, I have been attracted by the attempt to cross this dividing line.
The knowledge of San Giorgio’s model entered directly in the debate on the foundation of corporations. According to Genoese scholarship (e.g., Carlo Cuneo and Antonio Lobero) and the German scholars of the Historische Rechtsschule (e.g., Levin Goldschmidt, Karl Lehmann, and Max Weber), San Giorgio was an early example of later business corporations. These scholars, however, did not consider the possibility that San Giorgio’s model itself—or at least some of its characteristics—could be replicated over time; instead, they focused only on similarities. Part IV of this book has shown that there is more at work than mere similarity. My research shows that institutions do not become similar simply because they faced similar problems over time and respond to them similarly. Past scholarship has proposed that San Giorgio anticipated the Bank of England’s functions of deposit banking and managing public debt; it has recognized similarities between San Giorgio and the Mississippi Company because both transformed debt to equity (shares of public debt became shares of a company); and it has considered the VOC similar to San Giorgio because both institutions had shares and territorial power. These similarities are important; however, I propose looking at them differently. When we consider the similarities, we have to take into account that San Giorgio’s model was not only known when these later institutions were founded, but was in fact discussed by their founders, including William Paterson for the Bank of England and John Law for the Mississippi Company, and by someone in close contact with the founders of the VOC such as Paul de Choart de Buzanval. My research provides sources for the foundational moments of key business corporations and shows their links to San Giorgio’s model. It proposes a reconsideration of these foundational moments as well as a revision of accepted views on the formation of the concept of business corporations.
In Das Kapital, Chapter 24, Book I, Karl Marx dealt with the public debt of Venice and Genoa during the Middle Ages and with the British and Dutch East India companies during the early modern age. He maintained that it was public debt that gave rise to business corporations. I do not know of any other thinkers who connect public debt to business corporations. It is possible that Marx connected them after extensive reading of the English radicals: his source for this passage in Das Kapital is unknown. It is also possible that he proposed this connection based solely on economic analysis, without a source, or that Friedrich Engels interpolated the passage.
Whatever the origin of this idea, this book has demonstrated that a clear link exists between an early system of managing public debt, San Giorgio, and the later so-called business corporations.