Fighting Unfair Competition: The Bamberger Riot and the Emergence of Hire Purchase in Switzerland around 1900

Hire purchase is today one of the most popular modes of consumer finance world- wide, yet it is still in many ways stigmatized and controversial. In this respect, nothing much has changed since the late nineteenth century, when this new way of selling goods spread through the industrialized countries of the West. How unacceptable it was, Louis Bamberger—a pioneer of hire purchase in Switzerland—found out the hard way. In 1883, only months after the opening of his department store in St. Gallen, hundreds of angry people gathered in front of it and started smashing windows and looting. Beginning with this incident, which came to be known as the Bamberger Riot, this article traces the history of hire purchase and the controversy around it in Switzerland before the Great War. Focusing mainly on artisans and shopkeepers, I argue that the sudden emergence of hire purchase in Switzerland fundamentally challenged the market ethic and economic rationality of this section of the urban middle class.