IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/psitcp/978-3-031-60942-8_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Summer of 1903 and the Battle over Small Loans Between the Monte di Pietà and Private Banks

In: Different Forms of Microcredit and Social Business

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Rosaria Rosa

    (Università Di Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa)

Abstract

The article analyses the situation of the city of Naples, in southern Italy, and the central role played by the Banco di Napoli in the development of credit lines able to respond to the various needs of customers in search of liquidity during the early decades of the twentieth century. I will focus on a particular segment of the Banco’s lending practices, which concerns micro-credits to households. From this point of view, it is particularly interesting to follow the activity carried out by the Monte di Pietà, a branch of the Banco which had a long tradition in granting loans on pledges to the “less fortunate class”. During this period, the Monte di Pietà widerwent a process of reorganization. Its purpose was to counter, and eventually replace, the action of small private banks that had recently proliferated and offered a variety of credit services for the economic needs of citizens. Documents show a scenario of great competitiveness between the credit institution represented by the Banco and the private initiative of the many small credit entrepreneurs, a dimension in which the gender issue is not secondary. Through cross-referencing archive documentation concerning Monte di Pietà and the statutes of private banks founded in Naples at the turn of the twentieth century, I would like to reconstruct this specular dimension and outline the terms of a 'battle' for financial inclusion that offers a privileged look at the complex mechanisms and criteria needed to access micro-credit in contemporary cities. The big fire that in the summer of 1903 destroyed part of the Monte di Pietà of Naples is the starting point of this analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Rosaria Rosa, 2024. "The Summer of 1903 and the Battle over Small Loans Between the Monte di Pietà and Private Banks," Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance, in: Paola Avallone & Donatella Strangio (ed.), Different Forms of Microcredit and Social Business, pages 193-215, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-031-60942-8_10
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-60942-8_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-031-60942-8_10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.