RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

PROFESSIONS AND POWER IN EARLY MODERN AND MODERN ITALY

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di MILANO - SCIENZE DELLA STORIA E DELLA DOCUMENTAZIONE STORICA (MEDIOEVO, ETA' MODERNA, ETA' CONTEMPORANEA) - ()

Research Unit Leader

Elena Brambilla

Description

The research group intends to investigate the legislation that was promulgated in Lombardy from 1796 to 1861, but especially in the Napoleonic age and during the Restoration (1800-1830), in order to fill the legislative void which had been created by the abolition, between 1786 and 1796, of all the Guilds and Corporations, and so also of all the Colleges of Doctors for the liberal professions. Furthermore, the group intends to study under which conditions professional men worked in this period (1796-1815 especially): either in a free field, that is, without any regulation whatsoever, or under a series of renewed laws and charters, gradually promulgated by the professionals themselves, intent in reconstructing their self-government, and by the State. Finally, the research will reexamine the reforms introduced in the University of Pavia and in various Advanced Schools in Milan, Mantua, and elsewhere in Lombardy, to identify those institutes – such as the Medical Directory, a School for Advanced Law in Milan, Medical and Chirurgical Schools in the Hospitals of Milan and Pavia - which had been expressly organized in order to prepare the future professionals, first for the habilitation to practice (the so-called exams pro libera praxi), and then to a given period of professional training (tirocinio).

Medical culture and profession
Even if it will be focused on Lombardy, the unit will compare its results to the other Italian realities before Unity, when power and relationship between state authorities and urban elite and between State and Church can show analogies and differences useful to comprehend the professional evolution between early modern and modern age.
Therefore a part of the research will analyse medical professions in papal Rome, where it looks to be strong the dynamics between a certain corporative structure, wanted by a political and ecclesiastical power, also in a religious key, and phenomenon of social and cultural mobility of the different segments of Arts, that make focus on a institutional multiform system, as well as on symbolic capital offered by the Pope to the medical knowledge. Particularly the group will investigate changes from the second half of XVII Century (revaluation and stabilisation in the formation of surgeons minor or major; permutations of the collegial structure and in exchange dynamic; change of Curricula of doctors; valorisation of self formation institutions like Academies) to trace the changing social and intellectual aspect of those professions in Ancien Régime and to understand intellectual and ideological requirements to ideals crisis and social structure. It will be evident in the French age and during Restoration, by internal tensions in the profession and with the State (especially during the period of the annexation to the Empire of Napoleon), and also in the political involvement to the Risorgimento. The study about the medical profession in the crucial period of Unity will concentrate on a very important personage, by the reconstruction of the career of the “father of Italian psychiatry”, Andrea Verga (Treviglio 1811 – Milan 1895), thanks to his unpublished papers in the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan. The attention will be particularly put on the reason why a brilliant and young anatomist, who studied in the school of Pavia with Bartolomeo Panizza, he changed curriculum to study psychiatry, till he became one of the most important protagonist and organizer of this discipline, that became an independent and scientific branch of the medicine.

"Lower professions"
Lombardy and Venetian in XIX Century will be the background of some researches about minor professions, to try to enlarge the point of view of analisys. One of this trend will investigate the private woman teacher between the end of Napoleonic domination and the coming back of Habsburg, in the development of Public School System. The object will be to draw, examining the documents in Archivio di Stato in Milan, a map of the territorial dislocation of private teachers in Lombardy, and to analyse quantitative and qualitative data to know social and economical characteristics of women involved and their formative course. The research want to show the development of the “maestra di putti” profession in Ancien Régime, without any state control, to the character of the private teacher in a Public School System where there are rules and controls to clarify the role and the importance of private teaching in female education.

Polytechnic disciplines
The group will study also the polytechnic culture, where Lombardy played a central role in the national and european framework during early modern and modern age, through a specific scholarship. The Inventory of the Archivio del Venerando Collegio degli Ingegneri e Architetti di Milano and the research on its papers in the most important archives and libraries in Milan (Archivio di Stato, Archivio Storico Civico, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense), during the years 1573-1796, has been ended; through these sources the group wants to study the history of the Collegio degli ingegneri e architetti in Milan between XVI and XX century and the birth of modern professional orders tied to culture(engineers, architects, geometers, agronomists).
At the same time it will be examined the subject of polytechnic culture, trough the cataloguing and the study by trends (architecture’s books, urban planning books, science of construction and of materials, hydraulic, bridges and roads, the vapour age, electrical engineering, sanitary engineer, handbooks and professional tools machines and work, industrial objects and “protodesign”, reviews) of the 25.000 books more or less making up the Library of the Collegio degli ingegneri e architetti in Milano, who was born thanks to the heritage of Elia Lombardini, one of the most important hydraulic engineer of XIX Century.
In the end the research group will study the role of professionists coming from economic and polytehnic faculties and working in the great italian enterprise of the XX century (through interviews made to professionist employed in alimentary and building factories).

Economy and finance
Renaissance and Scientific Revolution founded, culturally and epistemologically, what we usually call scientific economics, and the specific profession of the economist. Classical views of history of economic thought usually underestimate the role of the theoretic categories established during the XVIth and XVIIth century, before the emergence of the specific scientific method of mainstream economics. European physicians, astronomers, mathematicians, theologists and philosophers wrote the firsts ambitious accounts about value, price, coins, labour, creating a new knowledge and a new profession. An interdisciplinary approach on the archaeology (à la Foucault) of the economic knowledge will be able to clarify those relations and to explain not only what was thought about economics before economics, but also how the economics became a specific field of the early modern (and modern) social sciences.
Deep attention will be put on the enterprise, commerce and financial world, to describe the arise and the construction of economic role of Milan and Lombardy, and the transformation from manufacture to financial capital, studying the figure, the member history and evolution of high professionalism. Not at random the renewed interest for financial institutions and for banking net in XIX century, even during Restoration, it has been expressed by recent studies about the relationship between “negozio” and bank and on private finance in Milan, who discovered an economical and financial activity more complex and dynamic than it was thought in the past, associating her activity with European economic growth. Even some analysis on evangelic or jewish reality helped to put attention on the business elite in Milan. If those research created new interesting questions, that also underline what we don’t know about structure, hierarchies, reasons and presupposition of the financial system development between the first and the second half of XIX Century.
The group will analyse some unknown aspects of banker activity and will clarify his role in business community, as well as in financial system evolution in Milan and in Lombardy during XIX century, before and after Unity. First of all, the group will analyse the profession practice, and the way fallen by the banker to become who he is; than, it will underline the relationship dynamic and type who tied together the operators in Lombardy to the local community business, and also to the financial Italian and European net, showing the evolution during the century and studying the exchanges, even cultural, promoted by those networks. Bankers, often strangers, were in fact always up to date about financial, economic and political news from Italy and Europe and they work not only with the variegated economic reality in Milan, but also with Italian (Piedmont, Genoa, Parma) and European (Paris, London, Frankfurt) elites, and with institutions and local or national government background. The group will clarify bankers role in economical and financial system evolution, before and after the Unità, analysing entreprises ans projects, verifing the participation or hostility to the foundation or activity of different banking institutions and studying their opinions about most important government decisions, and generally events and realities and financial innovations, also in Europe.
The project deals with the transformation of Milan Stock Exchange’s Trading Floor in the second half of XXth century. It draws from almost 80 interviews. Members of Milan Stock Exchange could be either “Agenti di cambio” or “Procuratori”. On top of Milan Stock Exchange, the “Agenti di cambio” (stockbrokers) executed orders on behalf of their clients (private individuals or banks) to buy and sell stocks. Stockbrokers also acted as principals of their agents on the trading floor. According to the Italian law (1913), they were Public Officials, the only ones authorized to trade in the Stock Exchange, but they were also interdicted to buy or sell on their own account.
As a social group, the 120 “Agenti di cambio” in Milan, were also highly hierarchical: few of them constituted an “aristocracy” with large financial, social and cultural capitals, gentlemanly airs, rich clients, stylish offices, smart living and housing. No more than 10 families perpetuated themselves in a sort of dynastic system. If the aristocracy did not attend the floor, others did. At a far lowest level stood the agents, the “Procuratori”. During the 50s each stockbroker could not hire more than 3 agents, but in the 80s they reach the number of 8. Socially marked with a sort of working class element, they were loud voiced traders, quoting prices and dealing in stocks and bonds shares. The research is essentially aimed to reconstruct, through oral sources, the rules of the game set by the players in the Milan trading floor.
From the trading floor, this people experienced the major turning points in Italian economic and financial history from the end of the II World War until the reform of the stock market in 1991 revolutionized the way in which stocks and shares are traded. Negotiated during the 80s between brokers and government, carried out in 1991, the reform was gradually implemented in three years time ending the face to face working practices and ending the professional figures of the singular “agenti di cambio” and the “procuratori” as well, now substituted by large financial firms.

Associationism and administration
In XX century, the group intends also to analyse professional history in Milan trough the social life and free time; particularly it will study the case of a famous club, born at the beginning of the century, wanted by entrepreneurs in Lombardy, and it will be compared with different Italian or International experiences, putting attention to analogous clubs inspired by a British model. The research wants to give a reconstruction of the club’s history from 1901 until now, in relationship with political, economical and cultural life in Milan and with the characters who promoted the club (entrepreneurs, financiers, professionals belonging to the most important aristocratic and middle class family in Milan and in Lombardy).
The research will analyse finally local administrations (municipalities and districts) and professional biographies. As far as administrations are concerned the group will study, between Unity and Fascism, the contribution given by professional associations and by single professionals (employers, consultants, critics, etc.) to administration, in relationship with politics for the town (traffic regulation, street forniture, hygiene, etc.), and generally to fiscal problems, office organisation, service making (specially those in net).
The period concerned by professional biographies is different. They will be concerning with the aspect “libero-professionale”, even in the case of famous politicians. The group will work on local cases, belonging to the first period of XIX century (doctors, layers) and to the years 1930-1950.