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chartered companies

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: chartered company
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Type of corporation that evolved in the 16th century in Europe. Under a charter granted by the state's sovereign authority, the company had certain rights and obligations which usually gave it a trading monopoly in a specific geographic area or for a specific type of trade item. In the 17th century, chartered companies were encouraged by the English, French, and Dutch governments to assist trade and encourage overseas exploration. Those companies that formed for trade with the Indies (see English East India Company; Dutch East India Company; French East India Company) and the New World (see Hudson's Bay Company) had the most wide-reaching influence. Some chartered companies were also involved in the settlement of colonists (see London Company; Plymouth Company). Eventually the development of the modern limited-liability company or corporation led to a decline in the importance of chartered companies.

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US History Encyclopedia: Chartered Companies
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Chartered Companies played an important part in the colonization of the New World, though they did not originate for that purpose. By the sixteenth century the joint-stock company already existed in many countries as an effective means of carrying on foreign trade, and when the New World attracted the interest of merchants, investors formed companies to engage in transatlantic trade. Since the manufacture or cultivation of many products required the transportation of laborers, colonization became a by-product of trade. The first English company to undertake successful colonization was the Virginia Company, first chartered in 1606 and authorized to operate on the Atlantic coast between thirty-four and forty-five degrees north latitude. Later charters to the London branch of the Virginia Company (1609 and 1612) and to the Council of New England (1620) enlarged and developed the original project. This method of sponsoring colonization predominated until the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s. The New foundland Company of 1610, the Bermuda Company of 1615 (an enlargement of an earlier project under the auspices of the Virginia Company), the Massachusetts Bay Company of 1629, and the Providence Island Company of 1630 represent the most important attempts at trade and colonization. After the Puritan Revolution, the lord proprietor superseded the trading company as preferred sponsor of colonization, and both king and colonists became increasingly distrustful of corporations. Massachusetts and Bermuda, the last of the charter companies in control of colonization, lost their charters in 1684, though the former had long since ceased to be commercial in character.

Bibliography

Andrews, K. R., et al., eds. The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America, 1480–1650. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1979.

Cook, Jacob Ernest, et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies. New York: Scribners, 1993.

—Viola F. Barnes/S. B.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: chartered companies
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chartered companies, associations for foreign trade, exploration, and colonization that came into existence with the formation of the European nation states and their overseas expansion. An association received its charter from the state and sometimes had state support. In the regulated company each member was an independent trader operating with his own capital and bound only by the general rules of the company charter. In the joint stock company the organization itself transacted the business, operating on the joint capital invested by members, each of whom shared proportionately in the profits and losses. The company received a monopoly of trade or colonization in a certain region and customarily exercised lawmaking, military, and treaty-making functions, subject to the approval of the home government, besides other privileges. The English Merchants Adventurers (1359) was more of a guild organization, but it foreshadowed such companies as England's Muscovy (1555), Levant (1581), East India (1600, perhaps the greatest of them all), Hudson's Bay (1670) and Holland's Dutch East India (1602). Such colonizing companies as the Virginia Company (1606), the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629), the French Royal West Indian Company (1664-74), the Santo Domingo Company (1698), and the Dutch West India Company (1621) were more quickly taken over by their governments. Later 19th-century colonizing and trading companies, such as the British North Borneo (1881), Royal Niger (1886), British South Africa (1888), and German East Africa (1884), did not last long and had more restricted powers, but attested to the continuing significance of the chartered company. In a technical sense, the modern corporation is a chartered company.

Bibliography

See G. Cawston, The Early Chartered Companies, 1296-1858 (1896, repr. 1968); R. Robert, Chartered Companies and their Role in the Development of Overseas Trade (1969).

Wikipedia: Chartered company
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The arms of the British South Africa Company.

A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonization.

Contents

History

Companies enabled merchants to band together to undertake ventures requiring more capital than was available to any one merchant or family. Typically, these companies were formed from the sixteenth century onwards by groups of European investors to underwrite and profit from the exploration of Africa, India, the Caribbean and North America, usually under the patronage of one state, which issued the company's charter. But chartered companies go back into the medieval period. One claimed to be the oldest is the Stora Enso with a charter of 1347 for a copper mine. Chartered companies enabled states to use private resources for exploration and trade beyond the means of the limited resources of the treasury, which is a liberal form of indirect rule; some companies did themselves employ a form of indirect rule of territories through traditional leaders, such as princely states with whom they (not the European state) made treaties.

Chartered companies were usually formed, incorporated and legitimised under a royal or, in republics, an equivalent government charter. This document set out the terms under which the company could trade; defined its boundaries of influence, and described its rights and responsibilities.

For example, the charter of the British South Africa Company, given by Queen Victoria, allowed the company to:

In return, the British South Africa Company agreed to develop the territory it controlled; to respect existing African laws; to allow free trade within its territory and to respect all religions.

Chartered companies in many cases benefited from the trade monopolies (such as the English Royal African Company, which held a monopoly on African slaving from 1672 to 1698).

In order to carry out their many tasks, which in many cases included functions - such as security and defence - usually reserved for a sovereign state, some companies achieved relative autonomy. A few chartered companies such as the British Honourable East India Company (HEIC) and Dutch Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) had military and naval forces of their own that dwarfed even the average European state's armed forces, and adequate funds to buy the best men and equipment, in effect making them a state within a state.

More chartered companies were formed during the late nineteenth century's "Scramble for Africa" with the purpose of seizing, colonising and administering the last 'virgin' African territories, but these proved generally less profitable than earlier trading companies. In time, most of their colonies were either lost (often to other European powers) or transformed into crown colonies. The last chartered company to administer territory directly in Africa was the Companhia de Moçambique in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique), which handed over rule of the colonies of Manica and Sofala to the Portuguese crown's colonial government in 1942.

Notable chartered companies and their abbreviations/ years of formation

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

British crown charters

The British East India Company's headquarters in London.
1/8 share certificate of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288.

a Became the largest colonial empire in the 19th century.
b Merger of the Turkey and Venetian Companies.

French

German

Portuguese

Low Countries

a Habsburg's Southern Netherlands, in India.

Scandinavian

a Governed Danish India from Trankebar.
b Created in connection with the Swedish colony New Sweden (Nya Sverige); absorbed by the Dutch; presently in Delaware.
c On the short-lived Swedish Gold Coast.
d Created in connection with the colonisation of Saint Barthélemy.[1]
e A failed attempt to organise Swedish trade in the eastern Mediterranean region.[1] It was illegal to speak French there.

Russian

Scotland

Sources and references

  1. ^ a b Björn Hallerdt (1994) (in Swedish). Sankt Eriks årsbok 1994: Yppighet och armod i 1700-talets Stockholm. Stockholm: Samfundet S:t Erik. pp. 9–10. ISBN 91-972165-0-X. 
  • Chartered companies
  • Colonial flags of Mozambique
  • Ferguson, Niall, 2003. Empire—How Britain Made the Modern World, Allan Lane, London, United Kingdom.
  • Hudson's Bay Company
  • Ross, R., 1999. A Concise History of South Africa, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
  • WorldStatesmen
  • Micklethwait, John, and Adrian Wooldridge. 2003. The company: A short history of a revolutionary idea. New York: Modern Library.

See also


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chartered company".  Read more