Another post about bankers, this time the Swiss variety. Years ago I heard that Swiss banking got its start when Protestant bankers, crosswise with the Counter-reformation, fled to Protestant Switzerland.
This has always sounded plausible to me. After all we know there was a lot of people-moving in those days and in particular, that French Hugenots took their Protestantism almost everywhere (and enriched virtually every society with which they came in contact).
Yet oddly enough, this is one "fact" --perhaps the only one--that the intertubes appear unwilling to confirm. Miscellaneous searches invoking "Lucca" together with (in some form or other) Swiss banking.
Can anyone help here? Am I totally spinning threads out of my own gizzard? Or is there some hitherto overlooked confirmation of this (alleged) phenomenon?
Oh, and while you are doing my research for me--I wouldn't mind laying my hands on good history of the Antwerp diamond trade as well.
This has always sounded plausible to me. After all we know there was a lot of people-moving in those days and in particular, that French Hugenots took their Protestantism almost everywhere (and enriched virtually every society with which they came in contact).
Yet oddly enough, this is one "fact" --perhaps the only one--that the intertubes appear unwilling to confirm. Miscellaneous searches invoking "Lucca" together with (in some form or other) Swiss banking.
Can anyone help here? Am I totally spinning threads out of my own gizzard? Or is there some hitherto overlooked confirmation of this (alleged) phenomenon?
Oh, and while you are doing my research for me--I wouldn't mind laying my hands on good history of the Antwerp diamond trade as well.
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