The archive of the Banco di Napoli and the activity of the Neapolitan Public Banks

Abstract

This paper deals with the Neapolitan public banks. These institutions are particularly interesting in banking and accounting history because they were the first ones to issue paper money in form of deposit certificates or fedi di credito during the second half of the 16th century. These bank deposit certificates were negotiable by endorsement. Their issue was caused in some way by the need to remedy the chronic shortage of coins that the Reign of Neapel suffered, a Reign that belonged to the Spanish Crown at that time. The first public bank was the Monte di Pietà. The name of public bank does not mean that the bank capital was governmental, but only that the bank enjoyed the support and recognition of the authorities. In compensation for this support the bank was controlled by the government. The paper explains the economic difficulties of the Viceroyalty, the frequent bankruptcies of private bankers, the growing money shortage, the money forgery, the clipping of the good coins, the leakage of the same abroad, the tense attitude of aristocracy and its uprising attempts, the Philip II's failed plan to established in the Reign of Neapel an unique bank in order to serve as the Bank of the State with the function to carry out the cash service of the Treasury and above all to grant loans to the government in favourable conditions -it is remarkable in this sense the parallelism with the discussion held in Spain during these years-, etc. All these facts induced the Viceroy, between the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies to give a status of legal tender to the deposit certificates issued by the Monte di Pietà, in the sense that they could be used for every payment to the government. In view of the success obtained by this measure, the same privilege was granted to other six banks between the end of the century and the beginning of the 17th century. The seven Neapolitan public banks duly performed their task and their deposit certificates became a money that had general acceptation; it reached a great circulation volume and a fast turnover rate. At the end of the 19th century the seven banks merged giving rise to the present Banco di Napoli. Their impressive accounting documentation is conserved in the historic archive of this entity. The sophisticated accounting system implemented to record the issue, follow-up, control and cancellation of the deposit certificates is particularly interesting; it is explained in the last section of the paper.