Origins and Rise of the Torlonia Family and Bank
This chapter retraces the family’s modest mercantile origins in France and the ambitious ascent of Alessandro's father, Giovanni Torlonia (1754–1829). Revealing unusual entrepreneurial capabilities and determination, he was able to seize the opportunities
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1 T he Ambitious Ascent of Giovanni Torlonia In about 1750 the young Marin Tourlonias (1725–1785), descendant of a modest family of farmers in the Auvergne region of southern central France, arrived in Rome in the entourage of the abbé Charles Alexandre de Montgon.1 He subsequently served as the valet to another diplomat, Cardinal Acquaviva, who bequeathed him a small legacy. With this Marin established a flourishing trade in brocade and silk from Lyons, and opened a shop in Palazzo Zuccari, in the area of Trinità dei Monti. In 1764 he was registered as a mercante (merchant) under the italianized name of Marino Torlonia. With a reputation as a hard-working and enterprising man, in the 1770s Marino supplemented his trading activity with moneylending, a not unusual combination within the European economies of the ancien régime.2 In this way he succeeded in amassing a considerable fortune, which he passed to his son Giovanni Raimondo Ponchon, L’incroyable saga des Torlonia; Bertini, Delle famiglie romane di T. Amayden. Fanfani, Alle origini della Banca, 24–27.
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© The Author(s) 2016 D. Felisini, Alessandro Torlonia, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41998-5_2
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Alessandro Torlonia: The Pope’s Banker
(1754–1829). Giovanni directed his attention towards banking and decided to give up his trading business—the Fondaco di Drapperie (a drapery store), still profitable and described as “the best in the city”—in order to devote himself exclusively “to banking matters” and thus gain admission to the Corpo dei Banchieri di Roma (Bankers’ Association of Rome), which he requested in 1779.3 He presumably shared the positive expectations generated by both the redevelopment projects and the personality of the new pope. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Braschi, elected to the papal throne in 1775 as Pius VI, had put forward a programme for thorough reform of the financial administration and extensive economic intervention, ranging from public works and land improvement to support for production, to the extent that there was talk of a “neo-Colbertist” economic policy.4 The Treasurers General who served under Pius VI, Guglielmo Pallotta and then Fabrizio Ruffo, implemented policies aimed at strengthening the state’s support for production, based on heavy protectionist measures that encouraged agriculture and manufacturing; these accounted for about 200,000 scudi in the ten years from 1785 to 1794.5 For expert advice they called in Giovanni Cristiano De Miller, giving him the responsibility for state planning: possibly English by birth, he had served in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under Francis I, husband of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and had also been consulted by the Russian government over the development of their textile industry. The breadth of his scholarly interests, which saw him publishing a commentary on Arthur Young’s Political Arithmetic in 1781, was matched by his activities: between 1777 and 1793 De Miller advanced a large number of projects, mainly aimed at developing the textile sector. His efforts, often paired wi
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