The first globalization, in the second half of the XNUMXth century, was accompanied, and in a certain sense guided, by a small and powerful international elite, the architect of a new economic system. It was this elite – says Giuseppe Berta, economic historian at Bocconi, in his new essay “The rise of international finance” – who designed the network of international exchanges, loans and transactions of the new economic geography of the world. As its capital, the elite erected the largest metropolis of the time, London, home to two empires: the Victorian military diplomacy and the informal one, with mobile borders, of finance. The London merchant bankers were an atypical aristocracy, which intertwined the power of money with that of institutional and social relations. Its exponents sat on the directorate of the Bank of England as well as in the House of Lords, held government positions and animated the most exclusive worldliness. Above all, they had an enormous awareness of themselves and of their own function, and great group and class solidarity.
Berta's book analyzes the rise of this imperial, capitalist and aristocratic elite together, and describes its social profile and operational culture. You start from the discovery of globalization, also on the basis of literary and artistic sources, then analyze on the one hand the spread of speculation and stock market gambling and on the other the concentration in a few hands of a colossal economic and political power. This was possible for the financial elite because, while professing the principles of absolute economic freedom, its liberalism was anything but an expression of the spontaneous forces of the market. The international financiers had given themselves tacit but stringent behavioral rules that delimited the space for both competition and cooperation. The era in which globalization took shape was by no means a period of economic anarchy, but of regulation of the economy, albeit on a strictly private basis. And perhaps this is the most profound difference compared to the globalization of our time, which has removed the dynamics of finance from every rule. But there is also a difference in style and behavior between the financial elite of yesteryear and today's.
"As much the financiers of the late nineteenth century - comments Berta - were detached in their ways, with a lifestyle that banned exaggerated behavior to rather enhance the coldness in every situation, so much their unrecognizable descendants of a century later exhibit their passions, their lust for success and profit. What unites two generations so distant is the belief that they hold the destinies of the world in their hands”.
