Noblemen in business in the nineteenth century: the survival of an economic elite?*

Abstract

This editorial introduces the 10 articles included in the special issue on ‘Noblemen-entrepreneurs in the Nineteenth Century. Investments, Innovation, Management and Networks’. The collected works focus on the business activities of noblemen in Europe and Asia, thus offering up opportunities for comparison in an age of economic expansion and globalisation. What was the contribution of the nobility to the economy? Can we consider noblemen to have been endowed with an entrepreneurial spirit? What differences or similarities can we draw between the European and Asian elites? In this introduction, we give a synthetic overview of the relevant issues in the broad topic of the collection and their importance to business history, and briefly present the accepted articles. As two of the articles deal with the Japanese case, while the others focus on Europe, we have dedicated specific sections to the European and Japanese nobilities.

Keywords:

• nobility
• aristocracy
• elite
• entrepreneurship
• land ownership
• land management
• investments
• family firm
• networks
• modern Japan
• Meiji Period
• Japanese nobility
• daimyo
• kugyo
• kazoku

Acknowledgements

About Asian noblemen, Professors Toru Kubo, Kazuo Hori, Shunsuke Nakaoka and Jin Sung Chung kindly gave us valuable comments. Shunsuke Nakaoka’s suggestions on European nobility were also most helpful. Although the authors are responsible for all errors contained in this introduction, we would like to sincerely thank the above four scholars. We are also grateful to all the participants, chairs and discussants in the various conference sessions where we presented our work for their contribution and remarks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Milan under ‘Transition Grant 2015–2017 – Horizon 2020 – Linea 1B. Progetto Unimi per ERC Starting e Consolidator’ led by Silvia A. Conca Messina; Fondazione Cariplo and Regione Lombardia under ‘Project 2016–0994’ led by Silvia A. Conca Messina.

Notes

1 Jaurés (1900–1903 and ff. editions) largely contributed to affirm this view; Hobsbawm (1978).

2 Among the first reconsiderations of the French ‘bourgeois’ revolution, see the studies by the English historians Alfred Cobban in the 1950s and 1960s and by the French scholars François Furet and Denis Richet (1960s–1990s).

3 See, e.g. Cameron (1961, pp. 21 and ff). A strong influence on the formation of previously prevailing views was also caused by Wiener’s interpretation of the negative impact of the British gentry culture on modern businessmen’s industrial spirit (see Wiener 1984), recently criticised by Casson and Godley (2010). On the German nobility, there have been abundant studies proposing a critical view, since their pre-industrial and anti-modern values prevented smooth development of the modern German economy; one particular example can be found in Wehler’s works, and another critical version can be found among Kocka’s examples (see Wehler 1975, Kocka 1988, 1993).

4 A broad reconsideration of the role of nineteenth-century French nobility can be found in Higgs (1987), who follows the suggestions emerging from Alfred Cobban and Mayer’s works.

5 There is now a vast body of literature on the topic. Here, references are limited to Thompson (1977), Stern (1977), Clark (1984), Moeller (1986), Higgs (1987), Dipper (1988), Janssens (1998), Pedlow (1998), Beckett (1986, 1988, 2000); Hagen (2002), Bouyer (2004), Thierry (2006), Eddies (2008) and Bengtsson et al. (2019). From a more traditional perspective, Lieven (1992), Cardoza (1988, 1997) and Malatesta (2004). On Italy, see also, e.g. Jocteau (1997) and Fumi (2014). A few studies are available on Spanish and Portuguese nobility, business and economy. Some examples are Ruiz Pérez (1988), Sarasa Sánchez and Serrano Martín (1993), Yun Casalilla (2002), Cunha (2006), López-Manjón (2009) and Rueda (2014). The contributions collected in this special issue were first published online (Abe et al., 2020; Conca Messina & Brilli, 2019; Felisini, 2019; Giner & Ruiz, 2020; Jensen-Eriksen et al., 2020; Mata, 2020; Nakaoka 2020; Poettinger, 2020; Tedeschi, 2019; Tolaini, 2020).

6 On their contribution to economic development in the nineteenth century, see Beckett (1988). On the early modern age see Janssens and Yun-Casalilla (2005).

7 See for example Whelan (1999).

8 In Finland, they were less than 0.2%, Jensen-Eriksen et al. (2020).

9 In 1858 Prussian landowners held about 40% of the land; in Junker provinces, the percentage was 62% in Pomerania and 57% in Posen, Spring (1977b, p. 4). At the end of the 1870s, noblemen still held 31.9% of Prussian land and ¾ of the plots were larger than 100 ha, Dipper (1988, p. 194). Eddies (2008) found relative stability in land ownership among the greatest owners in the seven eastern provinces of Prussia that formed the historical macro-region of East Elba between 1875 and 1914. In 1918 Poland, 40% of all estate lands belonged to 500 owners, and less than 100 people owned more than 10,000 hectares each. In some provinces, the gentry owned up to 70% of all cultivated land, Jakubowska (2012, p. 47). As for the French noble landowners, Higgs (1987, p. 33).

10 Among the first innovative studies, cf. Postel-Vinay (1981).

11 Wehlan (1999, pp. 83 and ff). On the key contribution of noble landowners to agrarian investments and land management in the nineteenth century, cf. Thompson (2016), Beckett (2000), Mingay (2000), Turner, Beckett and Afton (1997), Lieven (1992), Postel-Vinay (1981) and (1988), Higgs (1987), Moeller (1986) and Williams (1980). Cf. also Spring (1977a), Bush (1984), Mosse (1993), Hagen (2002), Wasson (2006), Thierry (2006), Biagioli (2000), Fumi (2014) and Conca Messina & Brilli (here).

12 Among the most required: silk, hemp, jute, linen for clothing, home textiles, sacks and packaging, sails; fuels such as coal, peat, wood; lubricants such as oil; minerals such as iron, tin, copper; potatoes for alcohol distilleries and starch manufacturing; malt for breweries, beets for sugar, citrus fruits for alimentary or pharmaceutical use.

13 Thierry (2006, pp. 139–140). According to Eddies (2008), the Junkers, far from being anti-industrial throwbacks, tended quite often to be industrialists and often had industrial facilities on their East Elbian land, where they held food processing businesses, and owned distilleries, brickworks, and land-using industries. For the Austrian case and the extensive presence of the nobility as owner and head of firms (under the auspices of the government) in textile, mining, metallurgy, sugar industry, and later in the century, in petroleum, etc. see Rudolph (1972, p. 35 and note 18, 35-38, 45 and passim). On the transformation of nobles’ mills in Normandie in textile mills or laminations, Richard (1968). The importance of entrepreneurship and investment by landed aristocrats for Victorian economic and urban expansion has been restated since F. M. L. Thompson studies, see Thompson (1984).

14 E.g. the construction in Paris and other large cities drained the countryside of workers, Higgs (1987, p. 68).

15 See for instance on France, Postel-Vinay (1988).

16 Peer-to-peer lending has been studied in France by Hoffman et al. (2019) and Postel-Vinay (1988). See on Finland and Italy: Jensen-Eriksen et al. here and Conca Messina (2022).

17 On patrimonial management strategies in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, see Janssens and Yun-Casalilla (2005).

18 Thierry (2006, p. 137), Janssens (1998, pp. 318–325), Cannadine (1990) and Higgs (1987, pp. 107–122). For an overview on nineteenth-century French nobles in business see Loménie de (1952). On Italy see Tolaini (2020); on Portugal, Mata (2019).

19 Hoffman et al. (1999). On financial elites, international financial centres and stock exchanges, and the corporate capital market before WWI, see Cassis (2006), Quennouëlle-Corre and Cassis (2011), and particularly the contributions by Ranald Michie, Leslie Hannah, Richard Sylla, Borodkin & Perelman; Cassis and Telesca (2018) and Hannah (2018).

20 Cassis (1984, 1994), Cannadine (1990), Cain and Hopkins (2016), Acheson et al. (2017). In Paris, of the volume of nobility-held assets worth over 1 million francs, the portion of securities increased from 40% in 1847 to 61% in 1911, while securities quoted on the stock exchange passed from 14% to 49% in the same period, according to Daumard (1973, pp. 260–66); Wiscart (1994) estimates that in the French Somme area, in the second half of the nineteenth century, 9/10 of noblemen had securities, pp. 149–151, 238–239; on Prussia see also Thierry (2006, pp. 136 and ff).

21 On England, see Cannadine; on Prussia, Thierry (2006); on France: Plessis (1988); Brelot (1992), Petiteau (1997), Wiscart (1994); on Italy: Coppini 1988, Assereto et al. (1991), Brilli and Conca Messina (2021). Just to give some examples, noblemen represented at least 20% of the Bank of France’s shareholders between 1851 and 1870. Their percentage among the 200 major shareholder members of the general assembly increased from 30% in 1815 to 38% in the middle of the century, and arose to 45% at the end of the Restoration and in the 1870s. They also held positions in the administrations, sat on the councils, were presidents and vicepresidents, etc., cf. Plessis pp. 258–59. In industrialised nineteenth-century Belgium, the percentage of noblemen among the shareholders of the Société Générale reached 39% in the 1830s and represented, among its commissioners, more than 30% from 1831 to 1865, Clark (1984, p. 156). They also sat on 50% of the administration boards of the coal industry, Janssens 1998, p. 322. In Finland noblemen played a leading role as managers or owners in one-third of the largest companies at the end of the nineteenth century, Jensen-Eriksen et al. here. On Italy see, e.g. Brilli and Conca Messina (2021).

22 In Liberal Italy industrialists and financiers accounted for at least a third of all the new titles granted in the two and a half decades prior to WWI, Cardoza (1988). Bruguière (1988). On the progress of the European inheritance system from legal and sociological perspectives, see Beckert (2008).

23 Hiroshi Mitani, a political historian, said that most of the samurai who were former rulers during the Meiji Restoration fell quietly without resisting the government, which was an unusual phenomenon during the Bourgeois Revolution of other countries. Mitani described it as ‘the social suicide of the Samurai Aristocracy’, and argued that it was one feature of the Meiji Restoration (see Mitani 2016, pp. 181–183).

24 As for the Chinese gentry and Yangban in Joseon, see Chang (1955) and Miyajima (1995), respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Milan under ‘Transition Grant 2015–2017 – Horizon 2020 – Linea 1B. Progetto Unimi per ERC Starting e Consolidator’ led by Silvia A. Conca Messina; Fondazione Cariplo and Regione Lombardia under ‘Project 2016–0994’ led by Silvia A. Conca Messina.

Notes on contributors

Silvia A. Conca Messina

Silvia A. Conca Messina is Assistant Professor of Economic History in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Milan ‘La Statale’, Italy. She has published widely on Economic History in Italy and Europe from the early modern to modern age. Her publications include A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2019); Cotton Enterprises: Networks and Strategies. Lombardy in the Industrial Revolution, 1815–1860 (Routledge, 2016). She is co-editor (with S. Le Bras, P. Tedeschi, M. Vaquero Piñeiro) of A History of Wine in Europe, 19th to 20th Centuries, 2 vols. (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2019) and is editor of Leading the Economic Risorgimento. Lombardy in the 19th Century (Routledge, 2022).

Takeshi Abe

Takeshi Abe is Professor Emeritus of Osaka University, and Professor of Economic History of Modern Japan at Kokushikan University. He is former President of the Business History Society of Japan (BHSJ) and took part several times to International Committees for congresses such as the World Economic History Congress and the World Conference on Business History. He is one of the co-editors of Region and Strategy in Britain and Japan: Business in Lancashire and Kansai 1890–1990 (London: Routledge, 2000 and 2005). Among his numerous publications: ‘Organizational Changes in the Japanese Cotton Industry during the Inter-War Period: From Inter-Firm-Based Organization to Cross-Sector-Based Organization’, in Douglas A. Farnie and David J. Jeremy (eds.), The Fibre that Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, 1600–1990s (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, pp. 461–493) and ‘The Chinese Market for Japanese Cotton Textile Goods, 1914–30’, in Kaoru Sugihara (ed.), Japan, China, and the Growth of the Asian International Economy, 1850–1949 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, pp. 73–100).