Chartered company

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A chartered company is an association with investors or shareholders that is incorporated and granted rights (often exclusive rights) by royal charter (or similar instrument of government) for the purpose of trade, exploration, or colonization, or a combination of these. [1]

Contents

Notable chartered companies (with years of formation)

Austrian

British

The article Chartered Companies in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, by William Bartleet Duffield, contains a detailed narrative description of the development of some of the companies in England and, later, Britain. [2]

Dutch

English

French

German

Polish-Lithuanian

Portuguese

Russian

Scandinavian

Scottish

Spanish

Italian

From 3 August 1889 to 15 May 1893 Filonardi was the first Governor of Italian Somaliland and was in charge of an Italian company responsible for the administration of the Benadir territory, called Societa' Filonardi.

See also

Notes

  1. The Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), active in India.
  2. The original West India Company collapsed in 1674, and the New West India Company took its place in 1675 and persisted until 1792.
  3. Merger of the Turkey Company and the Venice Company.
  4. Became the largest colonial empire in the 19th century.
  5. Governed Danish India from Trankebar.
  6. Created in connection with the Swedish colony New Sweden (Nya Sverige); absorbed by the Dutch; presently in Delaware.
  7. On the short-lived Swedish Gold Coast.
  8. Created in connection with the colonisation of Saint Barthélemy.
  9. A failed attempt to organise Swedish trade in the eastern Mediterranean region.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch West India Company</span> Dutch chartered company responsible for trade and colonization in the New World (1621–1792)

The Dutch West India Company or WICDutch pronunciation:[ʋɛstˈɪndisəkɔmpɑˈɲi] was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors, formally known as GWC. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1664</span> Calendar year

1664 (MDCLXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1664th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 664th year of the 2nd millennium, the 64th year of the 17th century, and the 5th year of the 1660s decade. As of the start of 1664, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Netherland</span> 17th-century Dutch colony in North America

New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the east coast of what is now the United States of America. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to Cape Cod. Settlements were established in what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch colonization of the Americas</span>

The Netherlands began its colonization of the Americas with the establishment of trading posts and plantations, which preceded the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. While the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 in present-day Indonesia, the first forts and settlements along the Essequibo River in Guyana date from the 1590s. Actual colonization, with the Dutch settling in the new lands, was not as common as by other European nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danish colonization of the Americas</span>

Denmark and the former real union of Denmark–Norway had a colonial empire from the 17th through the 20th centuries, large portions of which were found in the Americas. Denmark and Norway in one form or another also maintained land claims in Greenland since the 13th century, the former up through the twenty-first century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French East India Company</span> Defunct French trading company

The French East India Company was a joint-stock company founded in France on 1 September 1664 to compete with the English and Dutch trading companies in the East Indies. Planned by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, it was chartered by King Louis XIV for the purpose of trading in the Eastern Hemisphere. It resulted from the fusion of three earlier companies, the 1660 Compagnie de Chine, the Compagnie d'Orient and Compagnie de Madagascar. The first Director General for the Company was François de la Faye, who was adjoined by two Directors belonging to the two most successful trading organizations at that time: François Caron, who had spent 30 years working for the Dutch East India Company, including more than 20 years in Japan, and Marcara Avanchintz, an Armenian trader from Isfahan, Persia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swedish East India Company</span> Defunct Swedish trading company

The Swedish East India Company was founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1731 for the purpose of conducting trade with India, China and the Far East. The venture was inspired by the success of the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. This made Gothenburg a European Centre of trade in eastern products. The main goods were black pepper, spices, silk, tea, furniture, porcelain, precious stones and other distinctive luxury items. Trade with India and China saw the arrival of some new customs in Sweden. The cultural influence increased, and tea, rice, arrack and new root vegetables started appearing in Swedish homes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danish East India Company</span> Defunct Danish trading company

The Danish East India Company refers to two separate Danish-Norwegian chartered companies. The first company operated between 1616 and 1650. The second company existed between 1670 and 1729, however, in 1730 it was re-founded as the Asiatic Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French India</span> Former French colony

French India, formally the Établissements français dans l'Inde, was a French colony comprising five geographically separated enclaves on the Indian subcontinent that had initially been factories of the French East India Company. They were de facto incorporated into the Republic of India in 1950 and 1954. The enclaves were Pondichéry, Karikal, Yanam on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast and Chandernagor in Bengal. The French also possessed several loges inside other towns, but after 1816, the British denied all French claims to these, which were not reoccupied.

<i>Asiento de Negros</i> Spanish licence for monopoly of the slave trade in exchange for a loan

The Asiento de Negros was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide enslaved Africans to colonies in the Spanish Americas. The Spanish Empire rarely engaged in the transatlantic slave trade directly from Africa itself, choosing instead to contract out the importation to foreign merchants from nations more prominent in that part of the world, typically Portuguese and Genoese, but later the Dutch, French, and British. The Asiento did not concern French or British Caribbean but Spanish America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ostend Company</span>

The Ostend Company, officially the General Company Established in the Austrian Netherlands for Commerce and Navigation in the Indies was a chartered trading company in the Austrian Netherlands in the Holy Roman Empire which was established in 1722 to trade with the East and West Indies. It took its name from the Flemish port city of Ostend.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Netherland Company</span> Chartered company of Dutch merchants (1600s)

New Netherland Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants.

The French West India Company was a French trading company founded on 28 May 1664, some three months before the foundation of the corresponding eastern company, by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and dissolved on 2 January 1674. The company received the French possessions of the Atlantic coasts of Africa and America, and was granted a monopoly on trade with America, which was to last for forty years. It was supposed to populate Canada, using the profits of the sugar economy that began in Guadeloupe. Its capital was six million pounds and its headquarters was in Le Havre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese East India Company</span> Short-lived colonial charter company

The Portuguese East India Company was a short-lived and ill-fated attempt by Philip III of Portugal, to create a chartered company to ensure the security of their interests in India, in the face of the mounting pressure and influence by their rivals; the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company, following the personal union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns.

William Bolts (1738–1808) was a Dutch-born British merchant active in India. He began his career as an employee of the East India Company, and subsequently became an independent merchant. He is best known today for his 1772 book, Considerations on India Affairs, which detailed the administration of the East India Company in Bengal which began shortly after their victory in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The observations and experiences he recorded offer a unique resource for scholars inquiring into the nature of Company rule in Bengal. Throughout his life, Bolts continued to propose and execute various trading ventures on his own behalf and in conjunction with various commercial and governmental partners. The ventures of individual traders like Bolts did much to spur governments and large corporations into the expansion of their own interests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swedish West India Company</span>

The Swedish West India Company was a Swedish chartered company which was based in the West Indies. It was the main operator in the Swedish slave trade during its existence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of company law in the United Kingdom</span>

The history of company law in the United Kingdom concerns the change and development in UK company law within the context of the history of companies, deriving from its predecessors in Roman and English law. Company law in its current form dates from the mid-nineteenth century, however other forms of business association developed long before.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English overseas possessions</span> Territories ruled by Kingdom of England

The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union of 1707 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The many English possessions then became the foundation of the British Empire and its fast-growing naval and mercantile power, which until then had yet to overtake those of the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Crown of Castile.

Austrian East India Company is a catchall term referring to a series of Austrian trading companies based in Ostend and Trieste. The Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp and Asiatic Company of Trieste or the Trieste Company were founded by William Bolts in 1775 and wound up in 1785.

References

  1. Tony Webster (25 May 2015). "British and Dutch Chartered Companies". Oxford Bibliographics. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
  2. Duffield, William Bartleet (1911). "Chartered Companies"  . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 950–952.
  3. 1 2 Björn Hallerdt (1994). Sankt Eriks årsbok 1994: Yppighet och armod i 1700-talets Stockholm (in Swedish). Stockholm: Samfundet S:t Erik. pp. 9–10. ISBN   91-972165-0-X.

Bibliography