A peripheral hub of globalisation: local interest groups, global capitalists and foreign investment decisions in Naples (1800-1900). A network approach

Being at the crossroad of international financial interests (Rothschilds 1821-63; Système de la Mediterranée since 1832; public infrastructural plans since 1861), Southern Italy and Naples were integrated into changing global financial networks during the entire 19th century, with Italy’s Unification in 1861 marking the transition from the closed system of the protectionist Bourbon monarchy to the trade and capital openness of the new Italian liberal governments. We study the interactions between local interest groups and global financial actors by exploiting a newly built database (IFESMez www.ifesmez.unina.it) on the Naples business and institutional structure between 1812 and 1913. By using Social Network Analysis techniques, applied to two-mode and one-mode temporal networks, we identify the interest groups through proper community detection algorithms and on them we verify, through statistical models, how the network of interdependencies and power relations between local and foreign actors (individuals and firms) changed over the 1861 institutional breakpoint. Moreover, we evaluate the effect of the externalities generated by the network structure on the decisions of foreign capitalists to invest in Naples.