From despecialized to specialized financial activity. Insurance companies in Naples over the 19th century

The analysis is based on still unexploited archival data on the universe of Neapolitan enterprises in the 19th century gathered in the IFESMez database (Imprese, Finanza, Economia e Società nel Mezzogiorno) and organized as to show the relationships existing among individual actors, among firms and among firms and individual actors. After typifying the sector in terms of number of companies, size of capital, average lifespan of firms, legal type, etc., the paper aims at capturing the insurance market structure over the 19th century by analyzing the network dynamics of the sector within the universe of the Neapolitan enterprises. The topic is addressed by analyzing the Naples business ownership structure and the corporate boards networks in the 80-year span 1820-1900, in order to define the role of marine insurance companies in terms of centrality and concentration of power within the Naples corporate network and understand some of the workings of the local financial elite in maintaining the control over the sectoral market. 1861 is taken as a natural experiment for comparing the network structure and composition before and after Unification.