Before the Canton: Lakes, Passes and Lombard Commerce (to 1798) — a part of the book Lugano as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos.
Part A follows the territory of today's Ticino from its Roman and Lombard beginnings to the end of Confederate rule in 1798. It corresponds to the Geneva volume's part on the medieval fairs and shows how a borderland between Milan and the Alpine passes learnt to live from transit, emigration and the credit that both required.
This part belongs to Lugano as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
Between Como and the Gotthard: Land, Lakes and Lordship to 1500 — overview and summary
A financial centre is usually explained by its institutions: banks, courts, a stable currency, a statute on professional secrecy. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe lie of the land: two Ticinos, two lakes and a ring of passes
The Canton of Ticino covers about 2,812 square kilometres, which places it fifth among the Swiss cantons by area. Its internal division follows the relief. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonValleys and passes
North of the Ceneri the land rises quickly. The Leventina, the valley of the Ticino river, leads up to the Gotthard pass at 2,106 metres. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLepontii, Rome and the first roads
The earliest inhabitants of the region who can be named are the Lepontii, a people whom Greek and Roman authors placed in the high valleys around the sources of the Rhine and the Rhône and on the… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonSettlements, villas and roads
Roman settlement is best attested along the lakes and in the Mendrisiotto. A vicus at Muralto, on the shore of Lake Maggiore next to the later Locarno, has yielded remains of buildings, cemeteries… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLombards, Franks and the two churches
The Lombards entered Italy in 568 and within a few years controlled the Po plain and the Alpine approaches to it. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCarolingian counties and the power of the bishops
After Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774 the territory was organized in Carolingian counties. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCommunes, valley communities and vicinanze
The basic unit of local life in the medieval Ticino was the vicinanza or vicinia, the association of the heads of household of a village who held rights in common land, woods, pastures and water. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTowns, borghi and the notariat
The larger places of the territory were borghi, market settlements with walls or at least a legal status distinct from the surrounding villages. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonComo against Milan: the communal age
From the late eleventh century the cities of Lombardy emancipated themselves from their bishops and counts and became self-governing communes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonVisconti and Sforza: the territory in the Milanese state
The Visconti built the largest territorial state of northern Italy in the fourteenth century. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonAdministration and justice
The Visconti and Sforza administered their territory through a hierarchy of officials. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Milanese economy as hinterland
The duchy that governed the Ticinese territories was one of the most productive economies of fifteenth-century Europe. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe opening of the Gotthard and the valley economy
The Gotthard is the most direct crossing of the central Alps between the upper Rhine and Milan, yet it was the last of the major passes to be used for regular traffic. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonIncome, tolls and debt
The income that the route brought to the valleys took several forms. There were the carriers' fees, the charges of innkeepers and stable-keepers, the sale of hay and provisions to travellers and the… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona: castles, customs and the Confederate advance
Bellinzona occupies the point at which the valleys of the Ticino and the Moesa meet and the valley floor narrows between steep mountain slopes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona as customs station
The toll of Bellinzona was one of the richest revenues of the Milanese north. It was levied on goods in both directions: textiles, metal wares and horses coming south, grain, rice, wine, salt, silk… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMarket towns and the lake trade
Medieval Lugano was a borgo with a harbour, a market square, the collegiate church of San Lorenzo above the town and a castle that changed hands with each change of lordship. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona and Mendrisio
Bellinzona combined its military and fiscal role with a substantial market. The garrison, the ducal officials, the toll collectors and the merchants who waited for the clearance of their goods… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMoney, measures and credit
The monetary system of the medieval Ticino was the system of Milan, itself a local variant of the Carolingian order. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonUnits of account in daily practice
For the inhabitants of the Ticinese districts the practical consequence of this system was a permanent gap between the money in which obligations were expressed and the coins with which they were… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCredit in a notarial society
The sources allow a fairly detailed picture of credit in the late medieval Ticino, because almost every loan of any size was recorded by a notary. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA borderland economy: lines to the modern financial centre
The medieval history of the Ticinese territories can be read as a prehistory of the modern financial centre, provided that the lines are drawn with care. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCurrencies and units of account
The second line concerns money. For almost a thousand years the inhabitants of the territory kept accounts in Milanese lire while paying with coins of varying origin and value, and for three… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe economy of the border
The fourth line is the economy of the border itself. In the Middle Ages the difference between jurisdictions was exploited through tolls, privileges and exemptions. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Transalpine Bailiwicks: Confederate Rule, Justice and Public Finance, 1403-1798 — overview and summary
For almost three centuries the territory of today's Canton of Ticino was governed as a set of subject lands. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom Milanese valleys to Confederate bailiwicks, 1403–1516
The Confederate conquest of the south was neither planned nor linear. It advanced in three waves, each triggered by a crisis of Milanese power and each exposed to reversal. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona, the Riviera and Blenio, 1495–1503
The second wave followed the collapse of the Sforza state. In 1499 King Louis XII of France conquered the Duchy of Milan. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe rulers, the titles and the dates
The following table summarizes the eight bailiwicks, the cantons that ruled them and the dates of acquisition and loss. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA constitution of co-owners: the common lordships and their rulers
The Italian bailiwicks were governed under a legal model that has no exact modern equivalent. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonConfession and the balance of the ruling cantons
The Reformation split the ruling cantons. Zurich, Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen adopted the Reformed faith, Glarus became confessionally mixed, and Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg and… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe landfogto: office, income and the purchase of power
The central figure of Confederate government in the south was the landfogto (in German Landvogt, in the Italian documents also balivo, commissario or capitano ), the governor appointed by one of… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonPurchasing the office
In the Landsgemeinde cantons, election to a bailiwick was frequently bought. In the seventeenth century the rural cantons ( Länderorte) turned the purchase into an institution, the so-called… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe sindacato: audit, appeal and the limits of accountability
The sindacato (in German Syndikat) was the annual meeting of the delegates of the ruling cantons in the bailiwicks. Its members, the sindacatori ( Syndikatoren ), were one envoy for each co-owner. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonProcedure and timetable
The procedure of the sindacato combined elements of an audit, a court session and a diplomatic conference. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCourts, criminal justice and the revenue of punishment
Justice was the most important public service that the ruling cantons provided in the bailiwicks and the most important source of the income of their governors. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFines, confiscation and composizione
The penalties imposed by the courts were fines, corporal punishment, banishment, galley service and death. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWitch trials in the valleys
The most extreme expression of the inquisitorial system in the bailiwicks were the witch trials. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonStatutes, privileges and communal self-government
The reverse side of distant and venal lordship was a high degree of local autonomy. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom vicinanze to patriziati
The vicinanze survived the end of Confederate rule in a transformed shape. The modern municipality goes back to the Helvetic Republic of 1798, whose legislation separated the political municipality (… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTaxes, tithes and the public finances of the bailiwicks
The fiscal regime of the Italian bailiwicks was layered. The ruling cantons collected regalian income and a share of the revenue of justice, but they levied few regular direct taxes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWhat the communities levied
The main tax authorities in the bailiwicks were the communities. To pay for local needs (roads, bridges, dykes against the floods of the Ticino and the Maggia, churches, schools where they existed,… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCommunal debt and the credit market
Communities borrowed regularly, to finance extraordinary expenses such as the rebuilding of churches, the repair of flood damage, the purchase of grain in years of scarcity or the settlement of… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe grain question: food security as a problem of foreign policy
The bailiwicks could not feed themselves. The valleys of the Sopraceneri produced rye, millet, chestnuts, cheese and livestock, and the hills of the Bellinzonese, the Locarnese and the Luganese and… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFamine, plague and emigration
The early modern period brought repeated crises of subsistence. The harvest failures of the 1590s, the plague of 1629 and 1630, which struck Lombardy and the southern bailiwicks and in the bailiwick… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRevolt, critique and the end of subjection, 1755–1798
Confederate rule in the south was remarkably stable for more than two centuries. There were petitions, local conflicts and occasional violence, but no general uprising against the ruling cantons… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe spring of 1798
In 1796 and 1797 Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy created the Cisalpine Republic, constituted on 29 June 1797, which absorbed the former Duchy of Milan and, later in 1797, the Valtellina, Bormio and… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom landfogto to FINMA: governance lessons for the modern financial centre
A financial centre sells trust in institutions. Clients who deposit assets in Lugano, trading houses that structure their contracts under Swiss law and families that plan their succession through… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonIndependent courts established by law
The landfogto was a political appointee who held judicial power for two years and returned to his canton's politics afterwards. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLegality and predictability of taxation
The fiscal paradox of the bailiwicks, light taxes combined with unpredictable charges, is the negative image of the modern principle of legality in tax law. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMemory, trust and the political culture of the canton
The history of the bailiwicks survives in the political culture of Ticino. The feeling of being governed from the north by authorities that do not understand the south, the insistence on the equal… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMasters Abroad: Emigrant Builders, Artists and the Economy of Remittances — overview and summary
Among the regions that supplied early modern Europe with its builders, the shores of the lakes of Lugano and Como occupy a place out of all proportion to their size. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLakes, valleys and the necessity of leaving
The territory described in Chapter A.I was poor in everything except water, stone and people. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBorders that did not coincide with the trades
The region that exported builders did not coincide with the political frontiers that were drawn across it between 1512 and the nineteenth century. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA society of absent men
The social consequences at home were considerable. Contemporary observers and later historians describe villages in which, for much of the year, the adult male population was largely absent. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the magistri commacini to the Solari: the long medieval line
The earliest written trace of builders associated with the lake region is found in Lombard law. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe magistri Antelami in Genoa
A second early network ran from the Val d'Intelvi to Genoa. In Genoese documents from the twelfth century onwards the term magistri Antelami denotes building masters. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRome: Fontana, Maderno, Borromini and the Lombard nation
No single market mattered more to the lake masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than papal Rome. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe contractor-architect and his accounts
Fontana's career illustrates a feature of the building trades that matters for the economic argument of this chapter. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrancesco Borromini
Francesco Castelli, who later took the name Borromini, was born in Bissone in September 1599, the son of Giovanni Domenico Castelli, a builder of whom little is known, and of Anastasia Garovo. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonGenoa, Venice, Turin and Naples: the Italian courts and republics
Genoa offered the lake masters a market that combined public works, a rich merchant aristocracy and a long-established community of builders from the Val d'Intelvi. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTurin and the Savoy court
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the court of the dukes of Savoy, from 1713 kings of Sicily and from 1720 of Sardinia, rebuilt Turin as a capital, with new quarters, churches and a ring of… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonNorth of the Alps and to the East: Central Europe and Russia
The second great market for the lake masters opened north of the Alps after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Thirty Years' War had destroyed towns, churches and monasteries across the Empire. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonSalzburg, Bavaria and Swabia
In Salzburg the new cathedral was built between 1614 and 1628 to designs by Santino Solari, a master from the lake region whom Archbishop Markus Sittikus had appointed chief architect in 1612. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonGilardi, Adamini, Rusca and the Russian nineteenth century
The Russian market for Ticinese masters reached its peak between the late eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe humbler emigration: chimney-sweeps, chestnut- roasters and waiters
The largest group of emigrants from the Sopraceneri left no buildings behind. They were the chimney-sweeps ( spazzacamini) of the Verzasca, the Centovalli and the Onsernone, who worked every winter… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonChestnut-roasters, confectioners and café-keepers
The Val di Blenio developed a different specialization. Its men went to Milan and other cities of northern Italy as chestnut-roasters ( caldarrostai or marronai ), selling roasted chestnuts from… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom seasonal emigration to the Americas
In the middle of the nineteenth century the pattern changed. Rising population, crop failures and the decline of some traditional trades pushed emigrants from the Sopraceneri to more distant… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWorkshops, contracts, confraternities and notaries: how emigration was organized
The basic unit of the building emigration was the family workshop. A master took his sons, nephews and sons-in-law with him, trained them on the building site and, as they grew older, gave them… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonGuilds, privileges and competition with local masters
Foreign masters were not always welcome. In many cities of the Empire the local guilds of masons and plasterers held monopolies and regarded the Italian teams as competitors. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe notary as the backbone of the system
At home the notary was indispensable. The Ticinese territories, like Lombardy, belonged to the world of the Latin notariate, in which a public notary drew up authentic instruments that were preserved… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBringing the money home: cash, bills of exchange and couriers
The simplest way to bring earnings home was to carry them. A stucco-worker returning from Bavaria in November, or a chimney-sweep coming back from Milan in spring, carried his savings in coin, sewn… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMerchants, carriers and fellow villagers
Between the extremes of carrying coins and buying bills there was a range of intermediate arrangements. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonChurches, chapels and altars
A large part of emigrant money went into the church. The parish churches and sanctuaries of the lake villages were rebuilt, enlarged and decorated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, often… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonVillage capital: land, credit, inheritance and the absent member
The emigrant never ceased to belong to his village. Membership of the vicinanza, the corporation of the old-established families that owned the common pastures, forests and alpine meadows, was… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonVillage credit and the returning master as lender
Money not invested in land was often lent to neighbours. The returning master with savings became a creditor in his village, lending to families who needed to buy grain, pay a dowry or cover the… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the masters abroad to the modern private client
The economy described in this chapter rested on an asset that did not appear in any balance sheet: the skill, reputation and networks of the emigrant masters. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the undivided family to modern family governance
The undivided family community, in which brothers abroad left their shares under the management of a relative at home, survives in the Swiss Civil Code as the indivisione or Gemeinderschaft (Art. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRemittances and the modern law of payments
Remittances remain an economic reality in Switzerland, although the direction of the flow has reversed. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTrust, reputation and the private-client relationship
The emigrant economy of the lakes depended on trust between families and their intermediaries. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTransit, Tolls and Contraband: The Gotthard Route and the Milanese Market — overview and summary
The previous chapters followed the land, the lordships and the people of the lakes and valleys south of the Alps. This chapter follows the goods. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe making of the route, c. 1200–1500
The Gotthard massif lies at the centre of the Alpine arc, where the watersheds of the Reuss, the Ticino, the Rhône and the Rhine meet close to it. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA pass with a patron saint
Two further pieces of evidence point to the same period. At the summit a chapel was dedicated to St Gotthard, the Bishop of Hildesheim who had been canonized in 1131. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonUri, Urseren and the politics of the road
The Confederacy grew along the Gotthard road. Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden formed their alliance in the late thirteenth century, and Lucerne joined in 1332. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCarriers and corporations: carrying rights, Susten and the vicinanze
Until the carriage road was completed in 1830, almost everything that crossed the Gotthard travelled on the backs of animals. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe vicinanze and degagne of the Leventina as transport cooperatives
South of the pass the same functions were performed by the rural communes of the Leventina. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLiability for the load
The carriers' statutes allocated the risk of loss. As a general rule, a carrier who received goods at a Sust was liable for their safe delivery at the next Sust unless the loss was caused by force… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe price of passage: tolls and the dazio
A merchant who sent a bale of cloth from Basel to Milan in 1500 paid for the passage many times. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe dazio of the Leventina and the Dazio Grande
South of the pass Uri inherited the tolls that the cathedral chapter of Milan and the dukes had levied in the Leventina. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTariffs, exemptions and the incentive to evade
The dazio of the bailiwicks was levied on imports, exports and transit, with different rates for different goods and many exemptions. Goods of the ruling cantons often enjoyed reduced rates. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWhat crossed the pass: grain, salt, rice, livestock, cheese, wine and cloth
The goods that moved between Lombardy and the Confederacy fall into two groups. Long-distance transit goods travelled the whole route between the Rhine and Milan or beyond: textiles, silk, spices,… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRice and wine
Rice cultivation, which had come to Italy by way of Sicily, spread to the Po valley in the fifteenth century. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCloth, silk, metalwork and the long-distance trade
The long-distance trade was dominated by textiles. From the north came linen from Constance and St Gallen, woollen cloth from Flanders, England and southern Germany, and fustians and later cottons. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTreaties with Milan: from the capitoli to the Capitolato of 1639
The trade between the Confederates and Milan rested on a series of treaties that the German-language literature calls the Mailänder Kapitulate and the Italian literature the capitoli or capitolati di… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Capitolato di Milano of 1639
The treaty that is most often called the Capitolato di Milano was concluded by Spain with the Three Leagues of the Grisons on 3 September 1639. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe legal character of the capitulations
The capitulations were treaties between sovereigns, but their purpose was to confer rights on private persons: merchants, carriers, drovers and consumers. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMarkets and fairs: Bellinzona, Lugano, Locarno and the Lombard towns
The transit road connected a chain of market towns, each of which had its own weekly market and one or more annual fairs. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Lombard markets across the border
For the population of the bailiwicks the markets on the Lombard side of the border were as important as their own. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonContraband as a structural economy of the border
Smuggling on the southern border of the Confederacy was a permanent consequence of the legal and fiscal order described in the preceding sections. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRoutes, techniques and people
The smugglers used the paths across the hills of the Mendrisiotto and the Malcantone, the passes of the Val Colla and the Monte Generoso, and above all the lakes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonContraband and the modern criminal law
The modern law draws a sharp line that the old regime did not. Under the Customs Act, the evasion of customs duties and the import, export or transit of goods in breach of prohibitions or… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBrokers, forwarders and the instruments of credit
Every market and every Sust on the Gotthard route had its brokers. The Italian term was sensale, the German Makler or Unterkäufer. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe bill of exchange and the exchange fairs
The long-distance trade was settled by bills of exchange. A bill of exchange ( lettera di cambio) was an order in writing by which a person (the drawer) instructed another person (the drawee),… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom transit trade to trade finance: Chiasso, customs law and modern logistics
The transit economy described in this chapter ended in three steps. The revolution of 1798 and the Helvetic Republic abolished the bailiwicks and many of the privileges on which the carriers'… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe modern dazio: customs law and transit procedures
Today the import, export and transit of goods through Ticino are governed by federal law. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the bill of exchange to the documentary credit
The financial techniques of the transit trade have their modern successors in trade finance. Read more