Networks of powers and networks of capital: evidence from a peripheral area of the first globalization. The energy sector: from gas to electricity in Naples (1862-1914)

At the moment of Italian political unification, the Mezzogiorno (i.e. Southern Italy) was affected by a deep institutional change and it entered the wave of financial market openness, attracting all forms of investments from international capital markets. Naples – after having lost its previous role as the Bourbon kingdom’s capital city – enabled projects of large scale urban planning, beginning from basic public utilities. In this process, public and private lighting was chronologically the first area of interest – parallel to railway development planning – where international finance played a role. As an evidence of the dynamics which brought this peripheral European area into the orbit of the first globalization, this paper addresses the complex business of energy supply in Naples – between 1862 and the WW 1 – both from the point of view of its financial dynamics and the parallel evolution and organizational characteristics of the business actors involved. The Social Network Analysis (SNA) will support the reconstruction of the diversified and transnational businesses which the Neapolitan energy business was integrated in, at the same time giving evidence both to the bindings linking legally independent companies and the multiple relations between the actors involved. The transition from gas to electricity, during the time, marked the transition from weak to strong corporate ties according to the evolutionary trends of international financial markets.