The Emergence of Corporate Merchant-Banks in Dugento Tuscany

Abstract

This chapter illustrates that the Tuscan merchant-banks organizationally sat at the intersection of the otherwise distinct relational-flow domains of international trade, state finance, and noble kinship. Instead of mobile merchants from many nations traveling with their wares to and from central markets in France, a network of Italian (mostly Tuscan) merchant-banks developed in the mid-1200s effecting international movements of both goods and currency through themselves. Such banks were constructed out of sedentary merchants arranged in geographically distributed filiali or branches, sending letters to each other. Their multifunctional network position, the chapter argues, is why organizational innovations cascaded from one domain to another.