(^546) NOTES
junction not to reveal it to anyone. It is hard to understand such a strategy, unless the
ill-gotten gains were being shared right up the hierarchy.
- For an example with economic implications, see Koerner, "Linnaeus' Floral Trans-
plants," on the project of cultivating foreign flora in the Swedish climate in the eigh-
teenth century. Linnaeus' ambition to grow tea in the north did not succeed, but he
was following on and anticipating here one of the major gains to knowledge of geo-
graphical discovery.
22. I take this analysis from Tortella, "Patterns of Economic Retardation," pp. 8-9. - Tortella puts it differendy: the comparative disadvantage of Switzerland in agri-
culture, he says, was much greater. Citing Bergier, Histoire économique, pp. 106, 179,
he points out that from the Middle Ages on, Switzerland has imported nearly 50 per-
cent of its food. But comparative advantage is implicitiy relative, and this is just another
way of saying that Swiss industry paid better—in spite of government subsidies to
agriculture.
24. Tortella, "Patterns of Economic Retardation," p. 11.
25. On this, see Tortella, "La pénurie d'entrepreneurs," pp. 63-64.
26. Bradley, Guns for the Tsar, p. 45.
CHAPTER 17- Freudenberger, "The Schwarzenberg Bank," p. 51 and passim.
- On this banking world, see Landes, "Vieille banque et banque nouvelle," and
Bankers and Pashas. - For Rothschild interests in industry and transport, see the forthcoming history of
the bank and family by Niall Ferguson. - Cf. Barbier, Finance et politique, ch. 14: "Fould après Fould," tracing ties of the
Fould banking family to the bank Heine and others in Germany, the Gunzburgs (busi-
ness successors of Stieglitz; now related by marriage to the Bronfmans) in St. Peters-
burg, the Lazards and Furtados in France, plus noble clans (feudal and Napoleonic)
with vineyards, horses, and pocket boroughs. - Aside from the Société Générale of Brussels, one has the A. Schaffhausen'sche
Bankverein in Cologne, a private bank driven to failure in the crisis of 1848 and then
converted to the corporate form. The general impression that the brothers Pereire in-
vented a new form comes from such studies as Plenge, Grùndung und Geschichte des
Credit Mobilier, as picked up by Gerschenkron in his Economic Backwardness in His-
torical Perspective. (The title essay goes back to 1951.) - The Germans too, by law of 11 June 1870. The point was whether businessmen
could establish a joint-stock company with limited liability without obtaining prior
government permission, whether by charter from the crown or a bill of the legislature.
Tsarist Russia never got around to instituting such routine registration: by a decree of
1836, in effect until the revolution of 1917 (after which nothing mattered), any such
company had to be authorized by law—F. Crouzet, in Moss and Jobert, eds., Nais-
sance et mort, p. 201. In the United States, the rules varied from state to state, but de-
spite routine incorporation in some states well before the Civil War, partnerships
continued to dominate until the 1870s. One reason was that banks preferred to lend
on the security of unlimited liability. - On "assistance for the strong," see R. Tilly, "German Banking, 1850-1914."
- Ibid., p. 113. All industrial capital? Or just that held in public joint-stock compa-
nies? - On the triumph of trade liberalization, see Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières
... de 1789 à 1870, Vol. II, Book VI, ch. 5. It should be noted that this move to freer
trade was short-lived. In the wake of a severe financial and commercial crisis (1873-),
the major industrial nations moved back toward protection (Germany, Austria, Italy,