the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
within the Calvinist banking world, which came out of the religious persecutions
in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century France. The term ‘International Protestant
Banking’ is perhaps better for the larger network, of course including Huguenot
Banking but not only that.
The Protestant bankers in Catholic as well as in Anglican, Protestant and other
foreign countries remained in direct and close relationship with their homelands.
Generally the banks of the home town – Geneva, Basel, Zurich, Lyons, Amsterdam,
London, Strasbourg etc. – were older. The foreign branches at Lyons, Paris, Genoa,
Vienna and other towns in Catholic countries arose later. Of course, most of the
first French Protestant banks were branches of the merchant-banks opened by
Huguenots in the towns of their refuge, e.g. Geneva, Lausanne, Vevey, Neuchâtel,
Frankfurt am Main, Amsterdam, London etc. It may be that sometimes, the same
thing happened in the opposite way.
In spite of all kinds of persecutions in the Catholic countries against the
native Protestants, a select group of mainly foreign Protestants was allowed to
do business as merchants or bankers. The basis of these activities was either
economic privileges set out in treaties or alliances, e.g. between France and
the Swiss Republics since the early sixteenth century, or the liberty afforded to
Protestants through special edicts, e.g. in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Austria. The motivation for all this was the need for all kinds of useful political
and financial services the privileged bankers were able to offer to their Catholic
host-states: mainly mercenary troops on the one hand and the knowledge essential
for concentrating and furnishing all the immense and indispensable sums of money
nourishing the dynastic wars.
That is the reason why one finds most of the Protestant bankers rising to socially
high positions in foreign Catholic countries. By their theoretical and technical
know-how as well as their excellent relationship with other financiers and bankers,
some became financial counsellors of the crown, others consuls, ambassadors or
ministers of their own State at various courts. Some got into possession of one or
several royal monopolies: salt, the mint, copper or other mines. Because of their
inestimable services many of these Republican Protestants were ennobled.
Their special behaviour was the maintenance of Protestant faith and culture for
generations in the foreign countries of their choice. They always found an opportunity
to get married to Protestant brides of their social standing, in this way keeping their
families within the elite world of international Protestant banking over generations
in Catholic countries. This culture might have been maintained within the majority
of Protestant families even in the nineteenth century and later. But the general rise of
confessional tolerance in an increasing proportion of the Constitutions of European
nations makes it very difficult to continue arguing the problem of a Protestant
minority, as was the case during the time of the Ancien Régime.