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Updated: September 9, 2025
In Italy the Banca Commerciale was wont to send to every firm, whether it had or had not dealings with it, a tabulated list of questions to be answered in writing. The ostensible object was to obtain trustworthy materials to serve for the Annual Review of the economic movement in the country published every year by the Bank.
At a later date important conversations between the British Foreign Office and the Consulta were entered into in the name and for the alleged interests of Italy, but the principal part in the drawing up of the terms of the settlement arrived at was taken by Signor Nogara of the Societa Commerciale d'Oriente, the company which the concessions demanded were destined to benefit.
The Kaiser is one of the largest shareholders in the great mercury mines of Italy. Of this ingenious way of enslaving foreign nations unknown to themselves, Italy's experience offers us an instructive illustration. The headquarters of the German commercial army in that realm were the offices of the Banca Commerciale in Milan.
Since the commencement of this work, however, the following original paper has been considered worthy of attention, as it presents the most reasonable and logical theory yet put forward for the right to consider the French as the original discoverers, and readers will have pleasure in following out the various deductions as made by one of our fellow-colonists, E. Marin La Meslee, Member of the Societe de Geographie Commerciale de Paris, who has, by great research, compiled, in the following interesting article, the evidence relating to the voyage of the old Norman navigator, Paulmier de Gonneville, in 1503.
And as we saw, the negotiators of that peace were officials of the Banca Commerciale.
"It is obvious," we are authoritatively assured, "that the influence of such companies in administrative and political elections is put forth in congruity with the interests at stake, a circumstance which explains how it comes that many Italian politicians and representatives are, directly or otherwise, chained to the chariot of the Banca Commerciale and indirectly to that of Germany's policy."
Many of those financial institutions were but branches of German houses, and their methods were identical with those of the Banca Commerciale: long credits and easy modes of repayment offered to all those who agreed to deal with German firms, while discredit, ostracism, and ruin threatened the recalcitrant.
In the excellent work of M. de Sismondi, De la richesse commerciale, he says in a note on the subject of rent, 'Cette partie de la rente fonciere est celle que les Economistes ont decoree du nom du produit net comme etant le seul fruit du travail qui aj outat quelquechose a la richesse nationale.
The Banca Commerciale, which was admittedly an all-powerful German institution, and has the control, direct or indirect, of most of the industries, the silk manufacture, metallurgical and mechanical works of the country and of thirty-four electrical companies in Italy: which possess a capital of 434,000,000 francs and produce energy equal to 940,000 h.p.: found itself in an unpleasant predicament as soon as the King of Italy declared war against Austria-Hungary.
The manner in which this body of information was drawn up, sifted, classified, and made accessible, deserves unstinted admiration. To say that commercial espionage was practised largely in the working of this comprehensive system is but another way of stating that it was German. The Banca Commerciale, which was the head and centre of this organization, was, as a matter of course, called Italian.
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