ABSTRACT
Scholars of business history have had access to another archive of considerable historical importance – that of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, where the records produced by the bank from its founding in 1894 to 1934 have been put in order and made available to scholars. Vera Zamagni has written a succinct y thorough account of the history of an industry which only developed from the time of the First World War. Dominated by a few large enterprises, it was crowded with smaller firms incapable of bearing comparison – apart from niche productions – with more experienced foreign groups. In the nineteenth century the wool industry – characterized by a high degree of concentration and heir to a long pre-industrial tradition – developed in certain areas of Italy: Biella, in Piedmont, Schio and Valdagno, near Vicenza, and Prato, in Tuscany.
