the world of private banking

244
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
We could easily continue the description of the world of Protestant banking
in the towns of other non-Protestant countries of Europe: in Italy, in Portugal, in
Spain. In lieu of a complete map of all the towns where Protestant commercial
and banking activities can be made out, we have been able to address one of
the localities where Swiss merchants and bankers were present at the end of the
eighteenth century. We find them between Lisbon and Cadiz in the south-west and
Moscow and Petersburg in the north-east as well as from Bergen and London in
the north-west to Constantinople and Smyrna in the south-east. 28
Outlook on the Nineteenth Century
Some of the Protestant banking firms we have spoken about went bankrupt during
the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. But some of them not only
passed through these troubles intact, but were even able by simple opportunity or
progressive conviction to adapt themselves to the political and economic change
of the period. That is the reason why in 1798 the most important Protestant banks
of the vanishing Ancien Régime continued their activities. One of them was Jean
Conrad Hottinguer, a banker from Zurich, who after having got his training at the
‘Passavent, de Candolle and Bertrand & Co’ firm at Geneva, arrived at Paris in
1780. In 1794 he left France for three years for some trade and banking business
in the United States of America. When he came back to Paris in 1798, he founded
the ‘Hottinguer & Co.’ bank and immediately opened branches at Le Havre and
other French ports. He became a financial counsellor of Talleyrand and is known
as one of the first regents of the Banque de France.
Another Swiss Protestant banker in Paris, Jean-Frédéric Perregaux from
Neuchâtel, acted during the French Revolution, with his ‘Perregaux & Co.’ firm
founded in 1786, as banker of the Comité de Salut Public. He also brought his
financial support to the Directoire until its last days and played a further important
role in the early political and financial actions of the Consulate. Having actively
participated in the creation of the Banque d’Escompte in Paris in 1776, he also
became in 1800 one of the first shareholders of the Banque de France. After his
death in 1808, the bank changed to ‘Banque Perregaux, Laffite & Cie.’ and was
to remain on a high rank among the Haute Banque in Paris together with other
Protestant banks of mainly Huguenot and Swiss origin, such as ‘Mallet Frère
& Cie’, ‘Sartoris & Cie’ and also ‘Hottinguer & Co.’, which after the Bourbon
28
L. Bergeron, ‘Pourtalès & Cie (1753–1801): apogée et déclin d’un capitalisme’,
in Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. 25, 1970, pp. 498–517; Veyrassat,
Négociants; C. Aubert, Les De la Rüe marchands, magistrats et banquiers, Genève, Gênes
1556–1905 (Lausanne, 1984); N. Röthlin, ‘Ein Blick auf die Bezugs- und Absatzgebiete
des schweizerischen Grosshandels anhand einiger Bilanzen aus dem 18. Jahrhundert’,
in P. Bairoch et al. (eds), Die Schweiz in der Weltwirtschaft / La Suisse dans l’économie
mondiale (Zurich, 1990).