the world of private banking

PROtEStANt bANKING 237
from his predecessor, King Henry III, which had not been paid since 1587. While the
French treasury transferred exactly the expected sums to the Protestant Republics, the
Catholic ones were forced to write off a great part of their assets. 13
During the reign of Louis XIII (1610–43) the Treasury of the French State was
under permanent and growing pressure because of the King’s politics of territorial
expansion. 14 Swiss and French merchant bankers, mainly Protestants, played an
important role in offering the demanded capital to the Treasury. In addition to
the traditional Swiss financiers, the descendants of French Protestant refugees in
Geneva during the religious wars were now going to act as merchants and bankers
in French, Italian and other European economic centres. At the end of the sixteenth
and all through the seventeenth centuries they were successful in the production
and trade of silk, precious metals and watches as well as in merchant banking.
Because of the existence of international family groupings, a result of the refugees
dispersing to countries where they were admitted, these former French merchant
bankers were present and economically active in London, Amsterdam, Geneva,
Genoa and Cadiz, but also as ‘new Catholics’ in Paris, Lyons and Marseilles. Their
common fate created among them a special religious and economic solidarity.
Herbert Lüthy spoke of this community force as the ‘international Huguenot
bank’. They deployed an excellent international information network which
allowed them to trade on optimum terms. They offered short-term credits on
letters of exchange, principally to merchants but sometimes also to ruling princes.
During the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), the capital demand of the French
monarchy grew even more than before, greatly benefiting the Genevan bankers,
who consequently won more and more influence in France in general and at the
French court in particular. 15
After having cherished their traditional connections with Lyons and Paris during
the last decades of the sixteenth century, the Genevan merchant-bankers set up in
13
Ibid., pp. 423–8.
14
For more details, see R. Bonney, The King’s Debts: Finance and Politics in France,
1589–1661 (Oxford, 1981). Concerning the general problem of the State’s expenditures and
indebtedness, see M. Körner, ‘Expenditure’, in R. Bonney (ed.), Economic Systems and
State Finance (Oxford, 1995); M. Körner, ‘Public Credit’, in R. Bonney (ed.), Economic
Systems and State Finance (Oxford, 1995).
15
Concerning Protestant banking in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, see Lüthy, La Banque Protestante. For the eighteenth century: J. Bouvier,
‘Activités bancaires et groupes bancaires’, in P. Léon (ed.), Histoire économique et sociale
de la France, vol. II (Paris, 1978), pp. 310–21; P. Léon, ‘Prestige du monde de la finance’,
in P. Léon (ed.), Histoire économique et sociale du monde, vol. II (Paris, 1978), pp. 622–33.
Actually, the descendants of the Huguenot refugees in Germany had acted similarly, and
some of them created common trading societies with Swiss Protestants in France. See P.
Fierz, Eine Basler Handelsfirma im ausgehenden 18. und zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts:
Christoph Burckhardt & Co. und verwandte Firmen (Zurich, 1994); and M.A. Denzel, Der
Preiskurant des Handelshauses Pelloutier & Cie aus Nantes (1763–1793), Beiträge zur
Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, vol. 73 (Stuttgart, 1997).