Abstract

"Navigating Structural Holes: Bankers, Notaries, and the Circulation of Capital in the Nineteenth Century"

Raul Wildbolz-Gallego, UniDistance Suisse (raul.wildbolz@unidistance.ch)

Scholarship on private credit networks has traditionally emphasized the important role of notarial lending within the financial system. In classic works such as Hoffman et al. (1997), notaries are portrayed as providers of financial services who facilitated the flow of capital from lenders to borrowers. However, this system has often been conceptually framed through a dichotomy between notaries and banks. Specifically, it has been argued that during the nineteenth century, bankers gradually replaced notaries as financial intermediaries – a development considered a pivotal step toward a more efficient financial system that promoted economic growth (e.g., Gerschenkron 1962; Cameron 1967.
More recent work by Hoffman et al. (2019) offers a more nuanced interpretation, moving beyond the notary–banker dichotomy. On one hand, banks are no longer conceptually reduced to “universal banking,” as the “unit banking model” (i.e., sociétés commanditaires) is also recognized as significant. On the other hand, bankers and notaries are not viewed as competitors in this framework, since banks primarily provided short-term lending.
This paper contributes to this literature through a microeconomic approach based on the private records of two Swiss bankers – Turrettini and Passavant – between 1834 and 1845. Drawing on private correspondence, accounting books, and mortgage records, the paper demonstrates that bankers and notaries were not in opposition but instead cooperated as financial intermediaries. Unlike previous research relying on aggregate financial data, this microhistorical and transnational perspective reveals how bankers acted as attractors of capital by selling loan participations to their clients, while notaries remained essential intermediaries who enabled investors to identify the most reliable borrowers in need of capital. The paper thus uncovers a more complex system in which different actors filled structural holes through cooperation to enhance both profitability and financial services.