Basel: Kaufleute, der «Daig» und die Welt (17. bis 19. Jahrhundert)

Kaufleute, der «Daig» und die Welt (17. bis 19. Jahrhundert) – ein Teil des Buches «Basel als internationaler Finanzplatz» von Dr. Alexander Ressos.

Merchants, the "Daig" and the World (17th–19th Centuries)

Part C covers the period from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, when Basel was a city of merchants and manufacturers. Its economy was dominated by the silk ribbon industry, organised by merchant-manufacturers who put out work to rural weavers and sold their ribbons throughout Europe and beyond. Its society was dominated by a small number of interrelated families, known in Basel as the Daig, the dough, who combined trade, industry, public office and, increasingly, finance. Its merchants traded with France, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Italy and, through the Atlantic economy, with the Americas and Africa. Some of them profited from the slave trade and the plantation economy. And in 1815, the city became the seat of a missionary society whose trading company would play a significant role in the economy of the Gold Coast and of southern India.

This period saw the emergence of banking in Basel. The merchant houses that financed the ribbon industry, handled bills of exchange and invested their surplus capital in foreign public debt and commercial ventures gradually became banks. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Basel had a group of private banks that would found, in 1872, the Basler Bankverein, one of the two institutions that later formed UBS. Part C traces the path from the merchant house to the bank and examines the social, moral and international dimensions of the wealth that the Basel merchants accumulated.

Chapter I describes the silk ribbon industry and the putting-out system. Chapter II examines the patrician families of the Daig and their culture of discretion. Chapter III follows the transition from trade credit to banking. Chapter IV turns to Basel's involvement in the Atlantic economy, including the slave trade. Chapter V is devoted to the Basel Mission and its trading company, which link Basel with Africa and form a counterpart to the Africa part of the companion volume on Geneva.

About the book

This part belongs to Basel as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.