The Eastland Company, or North Sea Company, was an English Crown-chartered company, founded in 1579 to foster trade with Scandinavia and Baltic Sea states. Like the better-known Russia Company, this was an attempt by the English to challenge the Hanseatic League's dominance in the commerce of Northern and Central Europe.
Its charter was dated in 1579. By the first article, the company was erected into a body politic, under the title of the Company of Merchants of the East; to consist of Englishmen, all practicing merchants, who have trafficked through the sound, before the year 1568, into Norway, Sweden, Poland, Livonia, Prussia, Pomerania, etc., and likewise Revel, Königsberg, Dantzic, Copenhagen, etc., excepting Narva, Muscovy, and its dependencies. Most of the following articles granted them the usual prerogatives of such companies, including a seal, governor, courts, laws, etc.
The company's charter was confirmed by Charles II in 1661, with this addition; that no person of what quality soever, living in London, should be admitted a member unless he were free of the city. Many members of the Eastland Company were prominent English merchants in York, among them Thomas Herbert, Charles Micklethwaite, Christopher Topham, Matthew Topham and Percival Levett. [1]
The privileges specific to this company, compared to other English companies of the time, were:
The company performed poorly however, and resulted in most of the Baltic trade being in the hands of Dutch competitors. In 1672 Parliament passed the Trade Act 1672 (25 Cha.II c.7), entitled An Act for the incouragement of the Greeneland and Eastland Trades, and for the better secureing[ sic ] the Plantation Trade. The act was a mortal blow to the Eastland company. [2] Under sections 8 and 9 of the act and notwithstanding the company's charter, Parliament opened up free trade to Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, and allowed any Englishman to be admitted into the Eastland Company on paying only 40 shillings. [3]
The company's crest featured a creature called an allocamelus, a mythical beast which members of the company reported seeing, though Parker's Heraldry notes that it was only members of this company which reported sightings of it. [4]
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies, and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time.
The Navigation Acts, or more broadly the Acts of Trade and Navigation, were a long series of English laws that developed, promoted, and regulated English ships, shipping, trade, and commerce with other countries and with its own colonies. The laws also regulated England's fisheries and restricted foreign—including Scottish and Irish—participation in its colonial trade. While based on earlier precedents, they were first enacted in 1651 under the Commonwealth.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English trading company established in 1660 by the House of Stuart and City of London merchants to trade along the West African coast. It was overseen by the Duke of York, the brother of Charles II of England; the RAC was founded after Charles II ascended to the English throne in the 1660 Stuart Restoration, and he granted it a monopoly on all English trade with Africa. While the company's original purpose was to trade for gold in the Gambia River, as Prince Rupert of the Rhine had identified gold deposits in the region during the Interregnum, the RAC quickly began trading in slaves, which became its largest commodity.
The Muscovy Company was an English trading company chartered in 1555. It was the first major chartered joint-stock company, the precursor of the type of business that would soon flourish in England and finance its exploration of the world. The Muscovy Company had a monopoly on trade between England and Russia until 1698 and it survived as a trading company until the Russian Revolution. Since 1917, the company has operated as a charity, now working within Russia.
The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Elizabeth I of England approved its initial charter on 11 September 1592 when the Venice Company (1583) and the Turkey Company (1581) merged, because their charters had expired, as she was eager to maintain trade and political alliances with the Ottoman Empire. Its initial charter was good for seven years and was granted to Edward Osborne, Richard Staper, Thomas Smith and William Garrard with the purpose of regulating English trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. The company remained in continuous existence until being superseded in 1825. A member of the company was known as a Turkey Merchant.
Trading companies are businesses working with different kinds of products which are sold for consumer, business, or government purposes. Trading companies buy a specialized range of products, maintain a stock or a shop, and deliver products to customers.
The Steelyard, from the Middle Low German Stâlhof, was the kontor of the Hanseatic League in London, and their main trading base in England, between the 13th and 16th centuries. The main goods that the League exported from London were wool and from the 14th century woollen cloths. An important import good was beeswax. The kontor tended to be dominated by Rhenish and Westphalian traders, especially from Cologne.
The Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands was an early joint stock association, which began with private exploration and enterprise, and was to have been incorporated by King Edward VI in 1553, but received its full royal charter in 1555. It led to the commencement of English trade with Russia, Persia and elsewhere, and became known informally, and later formally, as the Muscovy Company.
A chartered company is an association with investors or shareholders that is incorporated and granted rights by royal charter for the purpose of trade, exploration, or colonization, or a combination of these.
The Second Virginia Charter, also known as the Charter of 1609, is a document that provided "a further Enlargement and Explanation of the said [first] Grant, Privileges, and Liberties", which gave the London Company adventurers influence in determining the policies of the company, extended the Company's rights to land extending "up into the Land throughout from Sea to Sea", and allowed English merchant companies and individuals to invest in the colonization effort. The charter includes a detailed list of the names of some 650 noblemen, gentlemen, officials, companies, and individuals who subscribed as investors.
The Company of Merchant Adventurers of London was a trading company founded in the City of London in the early 15th century. It brought together leading merchants in a regulated company in the nature of a guild. Its members’ main business was exporting cloth, especially white (undyed) broadcloth, in exchange for a large range of foreign goods. It traded in northern European ports, competing with the Hanseatic League. It came to focus on Hamburg.
The Incorporated Company of Hostmen of Newcastle upon Tyne, often called the Hostmen's Company of Newcastle, is a company incorporated by royal charter of 22 March 1599/1600. Analogous to a livery company of the City of London, it still exists. It is best known to economic historians as a cartel of businessmen who formed a monopoly to control the export of coal from the River Tyne in North East England. They were so known from the medieval practice of "hosting", whereby local businessmen provided visiting merchants with accommodation and introduced them to local traders. The Hostmen acted as middlemen with whom the coal producers and those who shipped the coal to London and elsewhere were forced to deal.
Events from the 1570s in England.
The African Company of Merchants or Company of Merchants Trading to Africa was a British chartered company operating from 1752 to 1821 in the Gold Coast area of modern Ghana, engaged in the Atlantic slave trade.
Percival Levett (1560–1625) was an early merchant and innkeeper of York, England, Sheriff of the city, member of the Eastland Company and father of English explorer Capt. Christopher Levett.
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.
Thomas Weston was a London merchant who first became involved with the Leiden Separatists who settled Plymouth colony in 1620 and became known as the Pilgrims.
Profession tax is the tax levied and collected by the state governments in India. It is a direct tax. A person earning an income from salary or anyone practicing a profession such as chartered accountant, company secretary,cost accoutant, lawyer, doctor etc. are required to pay this professional tax. Different states have different rates and methods of collection. In India, profession tax is imposed every month. However, not all states impose this tax. The states which impose professional tax are Karnataka, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Assam, Kerala, Meghalaya, Odisha, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Sikkim, Mizoram. Business owners, working individuals, merchants and people carrying out various occupations come under the purview of this tax.
The Spanish Company was an English chartered company or corporate body established in 1530, and 1577, confirmed in 1604, and re-established in 1605 as President, Assistants and Fellowship of Merchants of England trading into Spain and Portugal, whose purpose was the facilitation and control of English trade between England and Spain through the establishment of a corporate monopoly of approved merchants.
The Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh are the trade and craft bodies of the City of Edinburgh, Scotland, in much the same way as the Livery companies are in The City of London, but on a much smaller scale. The Incorporations are not "guilds", that term being properly reserved in Scotland for the merchant bodies in the various burghs. The Incorporations have never referred to themselves as guilds; indeed they came into existence, mostly in the latter part of the fifteenth century, in order to counter the growing power of the merchant guild, known as the Royal Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)| International | |
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