In the last decades of the eighteenth century cotton, then a fashionable production, was subsidized by the Austrian as the French government in their respective rule over Lombardy. Through various forms of state help, foreign capital and...
moreIn the last decades of the eighteenth century cotton, then a fashionable production, was subsidized by the Austrian as the French government in their respective rule over Lombardy. Through various forms of state help, foreign capital and skills were attracted to Lombardy and many manufactures founded.
Mule Jennies and roller printer made their apparition in the first factories of Milan. Governments were appeased, but the much desired cotton sector never really developed above the minimum size necessary to render mechanization profitable. Only the specialized printing activity of
Gio. Adamo Kramer could sustain the price of modernization.
What legacy did this fashionable cotton production leave at the eve of Restoration?
Milan´s first cotton manufactures served to insert the city in the Europe wide circulation of human and entrepreneurial capital necessary to trigger the subsequent industrialization of the region.
