Giandomenico Piluso

Emile and Isaac Pereire. Bankers, socialists and Sephardic Jews in nineteenth-century France

Helen M. Davies provides a very useful, state-of-the-art and nuanced portrait of the lives of Emile and Isaac Pereire, brothers and prominent bankers in a changing nineteenth-century France on her path to industrialisation. Of Sephardic background, the Pereire brothers ascended from the provinces and their relatively humble origins to the very helm of the French economy and élites, from their native Bordeaux to Paris. Relying upon a vast array of archival sources, Davies illustrates such a spectacular ascent by emphasising the relevance of a variety of factors: from the specific Sephardic culture to personal abilities and skills, from their Saint-Simonian political leanings to their engagement as journalists and reformers, from their vision of finance as an effective means to promote industrialisation to their innovative banking style. Particularly stressed, in this account, is the complex and multi-layered bundle of experiences accumulated by the Pereires from their childhood onwards in the Sephardic community of Bordeaux. From this peculiar milieu the Pereires received a neat sense of proud and aspiration inspiring them all along their social journey to prominent positions in the new French society as it emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. In this regard, the French Revolution of 1789 functioned as a crucial turning point, a positive precondition, as it first allowed Jews to enter as citizens into the affairs of the nation. Their father, Isaac Rodrigues Pereire, was a sort of forerunner in experiencing the ambivalent consequences of emancipation by trying to integrate his deeply felt Judaism with the Enlightenment political discourse, a path in a way followed also by his sons, Emile and Isaac, respectively born in 1800 and 1806. The death of their father, probably by typhoid, in 1806 coincided with his commercial failure, making the Pereires an impoverished family. The ability of the close-knit Jewish network of culturally homogeneous families represented a relative solace of such abrupt events shielding them from the harshest hardship and providing key opportunities. In this regard, the Pereires, as beneficiaries of Sephardic welfare, greatly benefited from the strong ties of solidarity and affinity that bounded a rich social network within this provincial ethnic minority. Moving from such personal experiences, Emile and Isaac aimed to face poverty and uncertainty by adopting a scientific discourse implying technological and institutional innovation. As self-taught reformers, they combined both a sense of entitlement, stemming from a strong religious heritage, and a forward-looking vision of what France could become by adopting an innovative strategy and embracing new industrial technologies. The move to Paris in the early 1820s paved the way for the Pereires taking an active part in Saint-Simonianism as a movement representing itself as the ‘religion of the future’ and within which Jews constituted a critical and influential mass. Having been working with the Rothschild bank, and much appreciated, since his earlier years in Paris, Emile was able to redefine his ambitions when the crisis of the Saint-Simonian movement became apparent by 1833. The construction of the Paris–St-Germain railway line between 1833 and 1837 was a watershed in the ascent of the Pereires as Saint-Simonian entrepreneurs, then supported by prominent financiers like James de Rothschild, representing a pivotal experience of how to deal with different markets (especially, the capital market), technologies (how to choose key

Financing the Largest Manufacturing Firms: Ownership, Equity, and Debt (1936–2001)

Taking an historical perspective, this unique book highlights the evolution of the many diverse forms of business enterprise, and discusses the contribution of these different types of firm to the economic growth of Italy.