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Corporate Rule: A Hidden History
Colonial Corporations
Corporations after the American
Revolution
The Corporate Return to Power
Corporate Regulation
Corporations and Global Trade
British Crown Corporations began operating in North America with the start
of European settlement. These Crown Corporations, also known as colonial
corporations, were a tool to export wealth back to the stockholders and
the monarch that chartered them. The creation of corporations expanded
empire and made the aristocracy wealthy. These early crown corporations
were given the right to levy taxes, wage war, and imprison people all
while enjoying a monopoly over trade in the regions where they operated.
As Thomas Hobbes stated, corporations are “chips off the off block
of sovereignty.” It was clear though that these corporations possessed
no rights of their own, but were rather artificial creations of the monarch,
that existed for the benefit of the sovereign monarch. At any point the
sovereign decided S/He would pull a corporation’s charter (the contract
that allows a group to operate as one entity).
Of course this wealth had to be exported from somewhere and in the Americas
the colonies were paying a dear price to bring the crown and its corporations
enormous wealth. Colonial repulsion against corporations grew so high
that in the weeks preceding the Boston Tea party that the town criers
were calling out on the hour to “Beware the East India Company.”
In direct protest of the company nearly one million dollars of property
destruction was dumped into the Boston harbor.
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