the world of private banking

PROtEStANt bANKING 245
Restoration became the most important creditor of the French cotton industry.
But more and more during the nineteenth century the Protestant bankers in France
became a real banker minority, because of the rise of other French private banks
on the one hand and of that of Jewish banks, particularly the Rothschilds, on the
other 29 .
A rather similar evolution can be observed at Vienna, where the Swiss
Protestant private bankers, such as ‘Melchior Steiner & Neffe’, ‘Geymuller &
Co.’ and ‘Fries & Co.’ together with ‘Arnstein & Eskeles’ dominated banking life
until the 1820s. But as already mentioned, Fries and Geymuller announced their
bankruptcy in 1826 and 1841, while ‘Arnstein & Eskeles“, ‘Simon G. Sina’ and
Rothschild advanced after 1830 to become the most powerful banks of Vienna. In
the Italian towns, where Protestant private bankers were active discreetly and as a
minority from the late seventeenth and during the eighteenth century, e.g. the De la
Rüe at Genoa, they remained on this level during the nineteenth century too. 30
Main Characteristics of Protestant Banking in Early Modern Times and the
Early Nineteenth Century
Upon reflection one may say that Protestant Banking was the business of a social
group acting with a complex combination of trading, financial and banking activities
in non-Protestant countries. In Protestant countries, they were of course part of
the dominant majority. But what exactly differentiated them from their Catholic
contemporaries? Their distinguishing feature is that they must be considered as
a typical minority phenomenon, of a convinced religious minority in Catholic
countries. One also may include among them the former Protestants who became
‘new Catholics’ by the opportunity of ‘conversion’, remaining in most cases in
the circle of international Protestant trade, finance and banking. It might be that
their particular role in history was to have been sometimes the dominant bankers
in Catholic countries, inasmuch as historical research does not demonstrate the
analogy for Catholic Banking in Protestant countries.
With regard to the Internationale Huguenote explored by Herbert Lüthy, one
must point out that the international network of Protestant Banking is far older and
more widespread than that, because it linked up with that of the traditional Swiss
and German Protestant bankers in the sixteenth century. Even in the eighteenth
century Austria knew foreign Swiss and German Protestant bankers who did
not descend from French Huguenots. That is the reason why we suggest using
the term Internationale Huguenote only in a restrictive way for the connections
29
Lévy-Leboyer, Les banques européennes (1964), p. 191; Lévy-Leboyer, Les
banques européennes (1976). Großkreuz, Privatkapital, H. Van der Wee (ed.), La banque
en occident (Gent, 1991), pp. 281–98; H. Pohl (ed.), Europäische Bankengeschichte
(Frankfurt a.M., 1993), pp. 196–202.
30
Aubert, Les De la Rüe.