Cipolla - difusión de innovasciones

8/13/2019 Cipolla - difusin de innovasciones

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Society for omparative Studies in Society and History

The Diffusion of Innovations in Early Modern EuropeAuthor(s): Carlo M. CipollaSource: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), pp. 46-52Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/178059.

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The Diffusionof Innovationsn EarlyModernEuropeCARLO M. CIPOLLAUniversitiesof Pavia and California, Berkeley

In recent years the study of the Diffusion of Innovations has become avery fashionable subject.EverettM. Rogers stressed the fact that his bookon the Diffusion of Innovations was based on 506 diffusion studiespublishedin the last decades. Of course quantityis not necessarily synony-mous with quality and brilliant ideas are not a function of the number oftitles printed. The first of the major conclusions reached by Rogers afterperusing the 506 diffusion studies is that innovativenessof individuals isrelated to a modern rather than a traditionalorientation .1One may doubtwhether such an extraordinary conclusion was worth the input ofenergy and goodwill that allegedly went into its production, butthere is no doubt that innovations and their diffusion are a topicof major relevancein the study of social development. Innovations are tohistory what mutations are to biology. Actually, innovations show aremarkabletendency to cluster in time and space, and this incidentallysuggests that attention should not be devoted exclusively to the eccentricindividual genius of the innovators, but should also be extended to theanonymous forces of the environment.In order to be effective, an innovation has not only to be conceived butit has also to be put into practiceand to be propagated.This processcan beeasilyhinderedby a numberof obstacles such as the naturalinstinctto clingto a traditional behaviourpattern,ingrainedsets of values,vested interests,institutional rigidities, shortages of resources necessary for embodyingthe innovation into current activity, etc., etc. Besides, innovation can beresisted on perfectly legitimate grounds. It is easy to equate resistancetoinnovation with stupidityand obtuseness, but it is not correct. On the onehand one has to admit that not all innovations are necessarilydesirable.On the other hand, as I have indicated elsewhere, when an innovation isfirst introduced, its advantages over established traditions are not alwaysvery obvious.... At their first appearance,innovations are less valuable

t E. M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York-London, 1962) p. 311.46

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INNOVATION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE 47for their immediateadvantagesthan for their potential for future develop-ment and this second quality is always very difficult to assess .2

Quite naturally, resistanceto innovation is noticeably greaterwhen theproblem is not that of applying an innovation in the environment thatwas its cradle,but of transplanting t into an alien and remote environment.Yet, despiteall kinds of obstacles, resistances and rigidities,innovations dotravel.The crucial factors are: (1) the innovations; (2) time; (3) the specificchannels of communication; (4) the sociocultural environments involved.As Lasswell once wrote, all communications research is an inquiry intowho says what, through what channels, to whom, with what results .According to Professor McLuhan we are now possibly on the eve of arevolution which will obliterate Gutenberg s legacy, but there is no doubtthat psychologically and otherwise we are still under the tyranny of theprintedword. Life is ruledby it and this simplefact leads us to overestimatethe effectivenessof the printed word as a channel for diffusion of innova-tions.In 1607 Vittorio Zonca publishedin Padua his Nuovo Teatro di Machineet Edificii which included, among numerous engravings of variousmachines, the description of an intricate machine for throwing silk bywater power in a large factory. Zonca s book was widely known (it wentinto a second edition in 1621 and a third in 1656), but in those daysgovernments were rightly sceptical about the efficiencyof the press as achannel for transmitting technical information. Notwithstanding thedescription by Zonca, the details of the mill were still considered statesecret and Piedmontese laws regarded the disclosing or attempting todiscover anything relatingto the making of the engines a crimepunishableby death. The Piedmontese wereno fools. G. N. Clarkhas pointed out thata copy of the first edition of Zonca s book had been on the open-accessshelves of the Bodleian Library from at least as early as 1620. Yet theEnglish succeeded in building a mill for the throwing of silk only afterJohn Lombe, during two years of industrial espionage in Italy, foundmeans to see this engine so often that he made himself master of the wholeinvention and of all the differentparts and motions .3 Critics of this storyhave pointed out that John Lombe s journey was really unnecessarybecause the silk-throwingmachines could have been constructed with thehelp of Zonca s book. They are perfectly right when they point out thatZonca s engravings are in fact more illuminating than Lombe s ownpatent specification. But they miss the point. And the point is, to para-phrase Professor Oakeshott, that a printed or written page is not anindependently generated beginning from which activity can spring; it is

2 C. M. Cipolla, Gunsand Sails (London, 1965) p. 131.3 On the whole story cf. W. H. Chaloner, Sir Thomas Lombe and the British Silk Industryin People and Industries London, 1963).



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48 CARLO M. CIPOLLAnothing more than an abstractof somebody s knowledge; it is the stepchildnot the parentof activity. The printedor writtenpage speaks only to thosewho know already the kind of thing to expect from it, and consequentlyhow to interpretit .4 Even today blueprints are considered inadequate totransmit full information and when a firm buys new and elaboratemachines it sends some of its workers to acquire, directlyfrom the builders,the knowledge of how to operate the new machines. Throughthe ages, themain channel for the diffusion of innovations has been the migration ofpeople.Cases of individuals who migrated temporarily in order to acquireinformation about innovations and to bring it back to their own countriesare not unheardof before the IndustrialRevolution. Nicolaus Witsen, ina passage that I shall quote below, mentions people who went to Hollandto study economicalbuildingin the dockyards . In 1657,John Fromanteel,of London, went to Holland to learn the art of making pendulum clocks ofthe type recently invented by Huygens and made by Coster: on John sreturnthe Fromanteelswerethe first to makependulumclocks in England.5In the second half of the seventeenth century, Dionigi Comollo, fromComo, accordingto his own words, spent many a year in Amsterdam andother main towns of Holland where at his expense and with great care helearned how to make woollens in the way the Dutch had newly de-veloped .6In 1684 the Republic of Venice sent SigismondoAlberghettiJr.,gunsmith, to England in order to acquire the new English technique ofcasting ordnance.7However, there were obstacles to this type of trans-mission of skills. Especially in fields where economic interests were atstake, communities and guilds were intractably jealous of their tech-nologies and, before the Industrial Revolution, they usually opposed thedissemination of their secrets.Before the IndustrialRevolution, the propagations of innovations tookplace mostly through the migration of skilled craftsmen who decided tosettle in a foreign country. The story is as long as human history. It goesback to the migrationsof the first neolithic agriculturalistswho moved intothe areasof the hunters;and in all likelihood it goes back even further thanthat.For the Middle Ages, it is easy to find telling instances in almost everyfield of human activity. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,thereis abundant literature about the French Huguenots and the FlemishProtestantswho brought to England, Sweden, and other parts of Europe

4 M. Oakeshott,Political Education(Cambridge,1951) p. 15.s F. J. Britten,Old Clocksand theirMakers, 7th edition edited and revisedby G. H. Baillie,C. Clutton and C. A. Ilbert (New York, 1956) p. 272.6 Archivio di Stato, Milano, CommercioP.A. 264/fasc.2.7 G. Casoni, Note sull artiglieriaveneta in Veneziae le sue lagune (Venice, 1847) vol. I,part 2, pp. 177 and 180.



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INNOVATIONS IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE 49advanced technologies and started new trades. The dramatic story of thereligious refugeehas such an appeal that one is often inclined to forget thatnot all migrations of skilled workers and innovations in the sixteenth andseventeenthcenturies can be ascribedto religiousfanaticism. A numberofthe Walloons who brought to Sweden the new techniques of casting ironcannon in the firstpart of the seventeenthcenturywere Catholic, and theywere for a time allowed to retain their faith as well as priests in theircommunities.8 Most of the French clockmakers who moved to Londonin the course of the seventeenth century were Huguenots, but JohnGoddard, in Portsoken Ward, was known as a papist .9The Swedish andFlemish craftsmen who moved to Russia in the seventeenth century andbrought there for the first time the technique of casting iron guns werecertainly not motivated by religious preoccupations.10Paul Roumieau,who reintroduced the art of watchmaking into Scotland, was traditionallysupposed to have been one of the refugees driven out of France in con-sequence of the Edict of Nantes. It has now been established that he hadmoved to Edinburghat least eight years before 1685.11However, makingdue allowance for these and similarexceptions, it cannot be denied that inthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries European craftsmen migratedbecause of religious persecution and that a number of innovations werestrictly related to those migrations.This brings us to the question of the forces behind the mobility of pre-industrial skilled labour. As is customaryin such cases, one can distinguishbetweenthe forces that act on the side of the push and the forces that acton the side of the pull . On the side of the push there is the long, grimlist of misfortunes that made life hazardous for the pre-industrialcrafts-men: famines, plagues, wars, taxations, shortage of demand for labour,political and religious intolerance. For the averageworker life was prettymiserable at best in normal times. A small extra dose of misfortune wasmore than enough to make it unbearable. The attachment of the pre-industrial workers to a given place was in direct proportion to theirstandards of living.Governments and administratorswere perfectly aware of the situation;they also knew that the loss of able craftsmen had ominous consequencesfor the economy. Decrees forbidding the emigration of skilled workersare not uncommon in the late Middle Ages as well as in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. Special attention was given to certain categories ofworkers whose activity was considered either essential for the safety of thestate or particularly mportantfor the economy. The Venetian government,8 C. M. Cipolla, Gunsand Sails, p. 54, n. 1.9 K. Ullyett, British Clocks and Clockmakers London, 1947) p. 18.10E. Amburger,Die FamilieMarselis. Stiudien urrussischenWirtschaftsgeschichteGiessen,1967).11J. Smith, Old Scottish Clockmakers(Edinburgh, 1921) p. 323.

D



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50 CARLO M. CIPOLLAfor instance, strictly prohibited the emigration of calkers, at least afterthe 1370s12and from a document of 1460 we learn that a calker who leftVenice risked, if apprehended,six years in prison and a 200-lire fine.13Inthose days, however, the effectiveness of governmental control was, ofnecessity, rather tenuous and it was not easy for government officials toenforce a law againstemigration.The repetitiousinsistencewith which thegovernments of Milan, Venice, and Florence issued decrees threateningpenalties for the workers who had fled the country and refused to return,offers conspicuous evidence (if evidence is needed) on the inefficacy ofcontrols over emigration.14Typically enough, impotence bred ferocity. In1545 and 1559 the Duke of Florence decreedthat workers in the brocadetrade who had left the town should return to it. Special favours wereannounced for those who would comply with the order and penalties werethreatenedfor those who did not. But in all likelihood the results were notsatisfactory.In 1575and again in 1578the Duke authorized any person tokill with impunity any of the above mentioned expatriates ; he also put arewardof 200 scudi for each expatriatecraftsmanwho could be broughtback dead or alive .15A number of circumstancescould pull craftsmen into a given area:a satisfactory level of effective demand, political peace and/or religioustolerance. Quite often there was also a conscious policy on the part ofgovernments. Administrators busied themselves not only with menacingemigrants but also with devising ways to attract foreign craftsmen,especially those who could bring with them new industries, and/or newways of doing things. In the twelfth and thirteenthcenturiesthe championsof the Drang nach Osten attracted Dutch peasants into Eastern Europewith generous grants of good virginland. In 1442 the Duke Sforzabroughtto Milan a Florentine craftsmanwho was supposedto startin the Lombardtown some special work of silk : for this the Duke offered a monthlysubsidy, tax exemption for the craftsmanand all his employees and duty-free imports for all the raw materials necessary for the enterprise.16Colbert gave to Abraham and Hubert (Jr.) De Beche privileges, land andtitles when he invited them to France hoping that they would establish aniron industry similar to that of Sweden.17On occasion, recourse to forcewas considered a legitimate solution and craftsmen were literally kid-napped. An inquiry made by the Bergskollegium in the 1660s on the

12G. Luzzatto, Studi di storia economicaveneziana Padova, 1954) p. 42.13Ibid.p. 43.14A. Fanfani, Storia del lavoroin Italia (Milano, 1943)pp. 144 ff. and Aspetti demograficidella politica economica nel ducato di Milano in Saggi di storia economicaitaliana(Milano,1936) pp. 125-57.15A. Fanfani, Storia del lavoroin Italia, pp. 147-8.16C. M. Cipolla, L economia milanese alla meta del secolo XIV. I movimenti economicigenerali in Storia di Milano (Milano, 1957)vol. 8, p. 353.17C. M. Cipolla, Gunsand Sails, p. 69, n. 2.



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INNOVATIONS IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE 51emigration of Swedish iron masters, uncoveredthat a number of workerssailed from Nyk6ping believingthat they werebeing broughtto some otherpart of Sweden. Instead they were brought to Liibeck and from there toHamburg and finally to France where Colbert insistently wanted to startan iron industryon the Swedish model. A few workersescaped and one ofthem, Anders Sigfersson,returnedto Sweden in 1675.18Of course it is one thing to lead the horse to the water; quite another isto make it drink. The fact that a person or a group of persons with know-ledge about an innovation moves into a given area is not assurancethatthe innovation will actually take place in the new environment. It alldepends on a number of circumstances. The personality of the migrantshas to be taken into account as well as their number in relation to thesize of the recipient society. No less importantis the nature of the recipientenvironment. Many western technicians went to Turkey in the course ofthe fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and brought with themnew techniques and new ideas.19Yet no appreciableinnovation occurredin Turkey. The refugees who moved to England found, instead, an ex-tremelyfertileground.The Huguenot clockmakerswho taught the Englishthe art of clock and watchmaking, the refugees from the Low Countrieswho brought to Norwich the techniques of the new drapery ,the Frenchglassmakerswho establishedthemanufactureof windowglass in England,20soon found local ingenious imitators who, by pursuing their ideas alongoriginal lines, further developed the foreign techniques and opened theway to more innovations. What makes an environment responsive andwhat does not is one of the most formidable problems posed for thehistorian.At firstsight the problem (of transplantingan innovation into analien environment) might appear to be merely one of introducing newmethods of productionand the instruments,tools or machinesappropriatethereto. But what is really involved in a vast changein sociocultural beliefsand practicesas well as in political and social structures.21The notion wasobvious centuries ago to the Dutchman Nicholaus Witsen when, in hisgreat treatise on shipping published at Amsterdam in 1671, he wrote:It is surprising that foreigners, though they may have studied economical building in thedockyards of this country, can never practise it in their own land ... And this in myopinion proceeds from the fact that they are there working in an alien environment andwith alien artisans. From which it follows that even if a foreigner had all the buildingrules in his head, they would not serve him, unless he had learned everything here in thiscountry by experience, and still that would not help him, unless he should find a way to

18SvensktBiografisktLexicon ad vocem De Besche.19F. Babinger, Maometto II il Conquistatoree l Italia in Rivista StoricaItaliana,63 (1951)pp. 469-505.20Cf. C. M. Cipolla, Clocks and Culture London, 1967)pp. 65 ff.; G. H. Kenyon, TheGlassIndustry of the Weald (Leicester, 1968); W. Cunningham, Alien Immigrants to Englana(London, 1897).21 S. H. Frankel, TheEconomicImpacton Underdeveloped ocieties (Oxford, 1953) pp. 22-4.



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52 CARLO M. CIPOLLAinculcate in his workmen the thrifty and neat disposition of the Hollander which isimpossible.22

It is all a question, as good old Nicholaus Witsen wrote, of disposition.And this allows one to end on a cheerfulnote. Throughout the centuriesthe countries in which intolerance and fanaticism prevailed lost to moretolerant countries the most precious of all possible forms of wealth:good human brains. On the other hand, the qualities that make peopletolerant make them also receptive to new ideas. Inflow of good brainsand receptivenessto new ideas wereamong the main sources of the successstories of England, Holland, and Sweden in the sixteenth and seventeenthcentury. It is gratifyingto be able to say that tolerance pays off.22 V. Barbour, Dutch and English MerchantShippingto the SeventeenthCentury in TheEconomicHistory Review,2 (1930) pp. 261-90.

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