The Italian destiny of the French Code de commerce

The chapter deals with the impact of the French commercial code of 1807 on 19th century Italian commercial law. Implementation of the Code de commerce in Italian territories in 1808-1809 followed the very successful path of implementation of the Code civil in 1806 and both codes were welcome and enjoyed long life in Italy. They served as reference for Italian codes during Restoration and also after national unification in 1861. In particular, French codification of commercial law can be regarded as a first moment of “transition” for Italian commercial law. Its contents were not entirely new, it was a sort of ‘compromise’, as well as the Code civil. However, through codification commercial law was affected by Napoleon’s political action: new legal principles were implemented, such as equality, private ownership, freedom of commerce and trades, free enterprise, free competition. In this perspective, the Code de commerce definitely sanctioned the final objectification of commercial law, which was no longer a personal law of merchants, but a law of the state based on equality and freedom. In this sense, it contributed to the construction of the Italian juridical identity.