Refugee capital: the Locarnesi and the Geneva Refuge compared

Two scales of refuge

The Locarnese emigration was one current in a much larger movement. After the reorganisation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, Italian Protestants from the great commercial cities of Lucca, Genoa, Cremona and Milan sought refuge in the Reformed cities of Switzerland, where they could practise their faith and take part in civic life. Geneva received by far the largest number. Between 1549 and 1587 almost eight thousand refugees were admitted there as residents, of whom about three thousand settled permanently, amounting to some thirty per cent of the city’s population. Lucchese families such as the Burlamaqui, Diodati, Micheli and Calandrini founded solid lineages in Geneva.¹ Against these figures the Locarnese community in Zurich, with between one and two hundred persons in 1555, of whom a considerable part moved on to Basel after 1558, was a modest group in a small city.

The difference in scale explains part of the difference in outcome. In Geneva the refugees became a large share of the population and, within a generation, of the elite, so that they changed the city itself. In Zurich the refugees remained a small minority whose members had to find niches within an existing guild order that was strong enough to impose its terms. Geneva granted refugees the status of habitants, which allowed them to live and work in the city, and admitted many of them to the bourgeoisie, whereas elsewhere guild opposition and territorial constraints restricted permanent settlement.² The companion volume on Geneva describes how the Refuge transformed the Genevan economy. In Zurich the story is one of a small group that transformed certain sectors of the economy over a long time and on conditions set by others.

Organisation and networks

The forms of economic organisation were similar in both cities. In Geneva, Italian and French merchant-manufacturers, sometimes organised in well-capitalised companies, produced silk yarn for local artisans and for export and manufactured velvets, taffetas and trimmings that were sold at the fairs of Europe. They used the Verlag system, entrusting work to master craftsmen who ran small family workshops in the city, while the guilds supervised apprenticeship, the quality of raw materials and products and the techniques used.³ Francesco Turrettini’s Grande Boutique of 1593 was the most prominent example of this pre-capitalist organisation with international networks.⁴ The same Turrettini had been a partner of the Werdmüller in Zurich six years earlier. The Zurich floret silk company of 1587 and the Genevan Grande Boutique of 1593 are thus two outcomes of the same Italian refugee expertise, applied in two different institutional environments.

There was one crucial difference in the fate of the industries. Geneva’s silk manufacture did not survive the economic crisis of 1780 to 1820, when it faced the competition of watchmaking and printed cottons, whereas Zurich’s silk industry entered its greatest period of growth in the nineteenth century.⁵ The reasons lie beyond the period of this chapter. One of them, however, was already visible in the sixteenth century: in Zurich the silk trade was rooted in the rural labour of the city’s large territory through the Verlag system, while Geneva, a city-state with almost no hinterland, depended on urban workshops. The Zurich merchants who inherited the refugees’ techniques could draw on thousands of spinners and weavers in the villages around the lake, a capacity that would carry the industry into the age of the factory.

What the Locarnesi reveal about refugee capital

The Locarnese case allows some general observations about the economic contribution of refugees, a topic that has returned to prominence in contemporary debates on migration and on the competition of financial centres for talent. First, the capital that refugees bring is seldom primarily financial. The Locarnesi left much of their landed wealth behind, and what they brought was knowledge of Italian markets, a network of relatives and correspondents, commercial and technical skills and the habit of working in partnerships. Their money capital had to be rebuilt in Zurich, often with local partners and local credit.⁶

Secondly, the institutional environment decides how much of this capital is realised and who reaps the benefit. Zurich’s guild order and its restrictive citizenship policy prevented the refugees from exploiting their knowledge freely, drove many of them to Basel and ruined Zanino. At the same time, it ensured that the new techniques were transferred to Zurich merchants such as the Werdmüller, who then built the great enterprises of the Seidenhof and the Wollenhof. From the city’s point of view the policy was thus a form of controlled technology transfer, harsh for the individuals concerned and profitable for the community. Thirdly, the refugees’ long-term success depended on persistence across generations. The Orelli needed more than a century to obtain full citizenship, while the Muralt needed 125 years from their arrival to their first seat in the Great Council. Their eventual integration into the patriciate made them part of the institutional structure that had once excluded them.⁷

Finally, the comparison with Basel shows that competition between Swiss cities mattered even in the sixteenth century. Basel’s readiness to admit the Orelli cousins, Castiglione and Robazotto as citizens attracted Locarnese capital and skills that Zurich had repelled, and Basel became, with its ribbon industry and its merchant families of refugee origin, the other great Swiss silk city.⁸ The threat of the Orelli in 1679 to move to Bern, which finally broke the resistance of the Zurich Great Council, shows the same mechanism at work a century later.

Notes

1. HLS, Italian edition, Tosato-Rigo, article on Protestant refugees (cited above). ↩
2. HLS, Italian edition, Tosato-Rigo, article on Protestant refugees (cited above). ↩
3. HLS, Italian edition, Mottu-Weber, “Seta” (cited above). ↩
4. HLS, Italian edition, Tosato-Rigo, article on Protestant refugees (cited above). ↩
5. HLS, Italian edition, Mottu-Weber, “Seta” (cited above). ↩
6. Weisz, “Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Tessiner Glaubensflüchtlinge” (cited above). ↩
7. HLS, Italian edition, Huber and Illi, “Orelli”; HLS, Italian edition, Illi, “Muralt” (both cited above). ↩
8. HLS, Italian edition, Mottu-Weber, “Seta” (cited above), on the Basel silk ribbon industry and its merchant families, among them the Sarasin. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.