Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-29T11:31:51.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The ‘untimely’ demise of a successful institution: the Italian Monti di pietà in the nineteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2019

Mauro Carboni*
Affiliation:
University of Bologna
Massimo Fornasari
Affiliation:
University of Bologna
*
M. Carboni (corresponding author), Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, Bologna, Italy; email: mauro.carboni@unibo.it; web page: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/mauro.carboni

Abstract

Recent literature has clearly charted the growth of pawn credit in nineteenth-century developing countries in Europe. Such expansion has frequently been associated with governments’ concerns to prevent malpractice and promote the establishment of public agencies that mirrored the Italian Monti di pietà. Precisely at the time modernizing European societies adopted the model of Italian public pawn banks, Monti were being dismissed as a relic of a bygone age in their home country. Assembling and comparing data from an 1896 national survey, we conclude that, contrary to traditional assumptions, Italian pawn banks were not obsolete or out of place in the European context of nineteenth-century pawn credit. However, ideology and hostile legislation did hamper the access to credit of those most in need, and the choice hardly assisted the modernizing spurt of Italian society.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are grateful to two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this article. All remaining errors are our own.

References

Antonello, P. (1997). Dalla pietà al credito: il Monte di pietà di Bologna fra Otto e Novecento. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Avallone, P. (Ed.) (2007), Prestare ai poveri: il credito su pegno e i Monti di Pietà in area Mediterranea (secoli XV–XIX). Naples: CNR-ISSM.Google Scholar
Balzani, R. (2000). Il forziere della città: La Cassa dei Risparmi e la società forlivese dalle origini al secondo dopoguerra. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Baradaran, M. (2015). How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Barile, N. L. (2012). Renaissance Monti di pietà in modern scholarship: themes, studies, and historiographic trends. Renaissance and Reformation, 35, pp. 85114.Google Scholar
Borderie, A. (1999). Le crédit municipal de Lille: quatre siècle de tradition bancaire et sociale. Lille: Collection Crédit Municipal de Lille.Google Scholar
Carbonell-Esteller, M. (2012). Montes de Piedad and savings banks as microfinance institutions on the periphery of the financial system of mid-nineteenth century Barcelona. Business History, 54, pp. 363–80.Google Scholar
Carboni, M. (2014). Il credito disciplinato: il Monte di pietà di Bologna in età barocca. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Caskey, J.P. (1994). Fringe Banking: Check-cashing Outlets, Pawnshops and the Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Cherubini, A. (1991). Beneficenza e solidarietà: assistenza pubblica e mutualismo operaio (1860–1900). Milan: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Cipolla, C. M. (1993). Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy 1000–1700. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clap, S. and Brihat, D. (2010), Du mont-de-piété au crédit municipal: Avignon 1610–2010 quatre cents ans d'une histoire exceptionelle. Avignon: Archives de la ville d'Avignon.Google Scholar
Colajanni, N. (1898). L'Italia nel 1898: tumulti e reazione. Milan: Società Editrice Lombarda.Google Scholar
Danieri, C. L. (1991). Credit where Credit Is Due: The Mont-de-Piété de Paris, 1777–1851. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Deneweth, H., Gelderblom, O. and Jonker, J. (2014). Microfinance and the decline of poverty: evidence from nineteenth-century Netherlands. Journal of Economic Development, 39, pp. 79109.Google Scholar
De Rita, R. (2003), Il Monte di pietà di Roma: credito e beneficenza alla fine dell'Ottocento. Rome: Edizioni Progetto Cultura.Google Scholar
De Rosa, L. (2003). Storia delle casse di risparmio e della loro associazione. Bari and Rome: Laterza.Google Scholar
Felice, E. (2015). Ascesa e declino: storia economica d'Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Felloni, G. (1997), Moneta, credito e banche in Europa: un millennio di storia. Genoa: Brigati Glauco.Google Scholar
Ferlito, C. (2009). Il Monte di pietà di Verona e il contesto economico-sociale della città nel secondo Settecento. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti.Google Scholar
Finn, M. C. (2003). The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fontaine, L. (2008). L’économie morale, pauvreté, credit et confiance dans L'Europe préindustrielle. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Fornasari, M. (1993). Il ‘Thesoro’ della città: il Monte di Pietà e l'economia bolognese nei secoli XV e XVI. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Fornasari, M. (1998). Credito ed élites a Bologna dall'Ottocento al Novecento. Bologna: Editrice Compositori.Google Scholar
Francois, M. E. (2006), A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking and Governance in Mexico City, 1750–1920. Lincoln, NE, and London: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Furher, K. C. (2001). Pawning in German working-class life before the First World War. International Review of Social History, 46, pp. 2944.Google Scholar
Halay, T. (1994). Le Mont-de-Piété des origins à nos jours. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Lopez Yepes, J. and Titos Martinez, M. (1995), Historia de la Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid (1702–1970). Madrid: Caja de Madrid.Google Scholar
Luzzatti, L. (1952). Opere di Luigi Luzzatti, vol. 4: L'ordine sociale. Bologna: Zanichelli.Google Scholar
Marec, Y. (1983). Le ‘clou’ rouennais, des origines à nos jours (1778–1982), du Mont de Piété au Crédit municipal: contribution à l'histoire de la pauvreté en province. Rouen: Editions du Petit Normand.Google Scholar
Mccants, A. E. (2007). Goods at pawn: the overlapping worlds of material possessions and family finance in early modern Amsterdam. Social Science History, 31, pp. 213–38.Google Scholar
Mclaughlin, E. (2013). An experiment in banking the poor: the Irish Mont-de-Piété, c. 1830–1850. Financial History Review, 20, pp. 4972.Google Scholar
Meneghin, (1986). I Monti di pietà in Italia: dal 1462 al 1562. Vicenza: LIEF.Google Scholar
Ministero Di Agricoltura, Industria E Commercio (1899). Statistica dei Monti di pietà nell'anno 1896. Rome: Tipografia Nazionale di G. Bertero.Google Scholar
Minkes, A. L. (1953). The decline of pawnbroking. Economica, 20, pp. 1023.Google Scholar
Montanari, D. (2001). Il credito e la città: Monti di pietà delle città lombarde in età Moderna. Milan: Vita e Pensiero.Google Scholar
Murhem, S. (2016). Credit for the poor: the decline of pawn-broking 1880–1930. European Review of Economic History, 20, pp. 198214.Google Scholar
Muzzarelli, M. G. (2001). Il denaro e la salvezza: l'invenzione del Monte di Pietà. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
O'connell, S. (2009). Credit and Community: Working-Class Debt in the UK since 1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pastureau, G. and Blancheton, B. (2014). The success of the Bordeaux Mont-de-Piété, 1801–1913. Financial History Review, 21, pp. 281–99.Google Scholar
Puglisi, C. R. and Barcham, W. L. (2008). Bernardino da Feltre, the Monte di pietà and the man of sorrows: activist, microcredit and logo. Artibus et Historiae, 58, pp. 3563.Google Scholar
Quine, M. S. (2002). Italy's Social Revolution: Charity and Welfare from Liberalism to Fascism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Raymond, R. J. (1978). Pawnbrokers and pawnbroking in Dublin: 1830–1870. Dublin Historical Record, 32, pp. 1526.Google Scholar
Rosoli, G. (ed.) (1978). Un secolo di emigrazione italiana: 1876–1976. Rome: Centro studi emigrazione.Google Scholar
Silvano, G. (2005). A beneficio dei poveri: il Monte di pietà di Padova fra pubblico e privato (1491–1600). Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Soldini, G. (1900). Leggi e statistiche recenti sui Monti di pietà. Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali e Discipline Ausiliarie, 23, pp. 203–18.Google Scholar
Strangio, D. (2012). I pegni dell'Urbe: il prestito su pegno a Roma attraverso l'attività del Monte di pietà tra età moderna e contemporanea. In Carboni, M. and Muzzarelli, M.G. (eds.), In pegno: oggetti in transito tra valore d'uso e valore di scambio (secoli XIII–XX). Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Tebbutt, M. (1983). Making Ends Meet: Pawnbroking and Working-Class Credit. New York: Leicester University Press/St Martin Press.Google Scholar
Todeschini, G. (2009). Franciscan Wealth: From Voluntary Poverty to Market Society. New York: Franciscan Institute, Saint Bonaventure University.Google Scholar
Todeschini, G. (2016). La banca e il ghetto: una storia italiana. Bari and Rome: Laterza.Google Scholar
Van Der Wee, H. (1993). Money, the Low Countries and the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Varni, A. (ed.) (1996). Per diritto di conquista: Napoleone e la spoliazione dei Monti di pietà di Bologna e Ravenna. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Vecchi, G. (2011). In ricchezza e povertà: il benessere degli Italiani dall'Unità ad oggi. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Woloson, W. A. (2012). In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence to the Great Depression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zamagni, V. (2002). Salari e profitti nell'industria italiana tra decollo industriale e anni ’30. In Zaninelli, S. and Taccolini, M. (eds.), Il lavoro come fattore produttivo e come risorsa nella storia economica italiana. Milan: Vita e Pensiero.Google Scholar