Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Heinrich Sieveking’s Genueser Finanzwesen (1900)

Schullern’s review evaluates Sieveking’s two-volume history of Genoese public finance, following its movement from the medieval commune to the Casa di S. Giorgio. His judgment is strongly favorable: he praises the annotated inventories of sources, the unpublished documentary evidence, and the instructive documents printed as appendices. The review’s central interpretive thread is the reciprocal relationship between fiscal institutions, political power, and social hierarchy.

Schritt auf Schritt können wir den Einfluss der politischen Geschichte auf die Finanzen des Staates und umgekehrt verfolgen.

English translation: Step by step we can follow the influence of political history upon the finances of the state and conversely.

For the first volume, Schullern traces the commune’s emergence from aristocratic rule alongside the development of customs revenues, public debt, and compulsory loans. He particularly commends Sieveking’s account of social stratification. Expanding state responsibilities increased compulsory contributions, while customs and consumption taxes—especially those on necessities—remained central to revenue. The reform of 1303 illustrates how debt administration became an engine of institutional change: capitalists whose wealth was invested in state debt had the strongest interest in reform.

The accession of the popularly elected doge Simone Boccanegra in 1339 exposes the limits of political emancipation without fiscal reconstruction. Suspending food duties answered popular hostility to aristocratic taxation, but the failure to introduce a corresponding direct tax deepened the treasury’s difficulties.

So wuchs die Finanznoth, und mit ihr erhob sich wieder die Macht zwar nicht des Geburts-, wohl aber die des Finanzadels.

English translation: Thus the financial distress grew, and with it there arose again the power, not indeed of the nobility of birth, but that of the nobility of finance.

Schullern thus presents the displacement of hereditary elites as compatible with renewed domination by financial elites. His notices of double-entry bookkeeping, inventive taxation, luxury duties, and provisioning policy extend this argument: administrative sophistication did not remove the dependence of public finance on ruling-class interests.

The second volume follows the Casa di S. Giorgio from its foundation in 1407 through its debt administration, banking, colonial government, and eventual dissolution. Schullern again stresses the extensive archival basis, while offering his principal reservation: chronological exposition sometimes threatens the clarity of the subject. The decisive conceptual distinction concerns the institution’s legal and economic character.

Sieveking sieht in der Casa di S. Giorgio nicht eine Actiengesellschaft, sondern eher eine Art gesetzlichen Mehrheitsverbandes, ähnlich dem der Concursgläubiger.

English translation: Sieveking sees in the Casa di S. Giorgio not a joint-stock company, but rather a kind of statutory majority association, similar to that of the creditors in bankruptcy.

This classification makes the Casa’s protection of state creditors, rather than an assumed corporate form, the key to its operations. Its services to the government were costly: Genoa surrendered tax revenues, buildings, and eventually territories. Schullern emphasizes that the institution’s obligations to creditors did not necessarily coincide with patriotic considerations. Its defects are nevertheless situated historically in the social and financial disorder from which it arose.

Banking and colonial administration reveal both the reach and the constraints of this creditor power. Although authorized to conduct banking in 1408, the Casa ceased doing so between 1444 and 1586 because it could not maintain the exchange rate demanded by the government. Colonial possessions likewise brought burdens of defense and administration alongside opportunities for revenue. Fiscal dependence transferred governmental responsibilities to the Casa, but exercising them required careful management and exploitation of the territories.

Schullern closes by widening the study’s significance beyond Genoa:

Die vorliegende Schrift zeichnet sich — wie noch bemerkt werden mag — auch durch die zahlreichen Vergleiche aus, die in ihr zwischen den Verhältnissen Genua's und denen anderer italienischer und auch deutscher Städte gezogen werden.

English translation: The present work is distinguished — as may still be remarked — also by the numerous comparisons drawn in it between the conditions of Genoa and those of other Italian and also German cities.

The review recommends Sieveking’s work as a documentary and comparative contribution to economic history. Its most consequential insight is that public debt did more than finance government: it helped reorganize political authority, redistribute administrative functions, and sustain the power of creditors.