List of trading companies

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A trading company is a business that works with different kinds of products sold for consumer, business purposes. In contemporary times, trading companies buy a specialized range of products, shopkeeper them, and coordinate delivery of products to customers.

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Trading companies may connect buyers and sellers, but not partake in the ownership or storage of goods, earning their revenue through sales commissions. [1] They may also be structured to engage in commerce with foreign countries or territories. [2] During times of colonization, some trading companies were granted a charter, giving them "rights to a specific territory within an area claimed by the authority granting the charter including legal title, a monopoly of trade, and governmental and military jurisdiction". [2]

Trading companies

The shipyard of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam. 1726 engraving by Joseph Mulder. Voc.jpg
The shipyard of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam. 1726 engraving by Joseph Mulder.

By country

Brazil

India

Japan

South Korea

USA

Oil traders

Trading systems

Defunct

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corporation</span> Legal entity incorporated through a legislative or registration process

A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity and recognized as such in law for certain purposes. Early incorporated entities were established by charter. Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration. Corporations come in many different types but are usually divided by the law of the jurisdiction where they are chartered based on two aspects: whether they can issue stock, or whether they are formed to make a profit. Depending on the number of owners, a corporation can be classified as aggregate or sole.

<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">Dutch East India Company</span> 1602–1799 Dutch trading company

The United East India Company, commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces and subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.

<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 to 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.

A multinational corporation is a corporate organization that owns and controls the production of goods or services in at least one country other than its home country. Control is considered an important aspect of an MNC to distinguish it from international portfolio investment organizations, such as some international mutual funds that invest in corporations abroad simply to diversify financial risks. Black's Law Dictionary suggests that a company or group should be considered a multinational corporation "if it derives 25% or more of its revenue from out-of-home-country operations".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippi Company</span> Monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies

The Mississippi Company was a corporation holding a business monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies. In 1717, the Mississippi Company received a royal grant with exclusive trading rights for 25 years. The rise and fall of the company is connected with the activities of the Scottish financier and economist John Law who was then the Controller General of Finances of France. Though the company itself started to become profitable and remained solvent until the collapse of the bubble, when speculation in French financial circles and land development in the region became frenzied and detached from economic reality, the Mississippi bubble became one of the earliest examples of an economic bubble.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Sassoon</span> Businessman and hotelier (1881–1961)

Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon, 3rd Baronet was an Italian businessman and hotelier from the wealthy Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon merchant and banking family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mercantile Bank of India, London and China</span> UK business

The Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, later Mercantile Bank Ltd, was an Anglo-Indian bank with business focus in the Far East. It was founded in Bombay in 1853 as the Mercantile Bank of Bombay; and later in 1857 was renamed to Mercantile Bank of India, London, and China with London as its headquarters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Indiaman</span> Merchant ships operating under charter or license to European East India companies

East Indiaman was a general name for any merchant ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vessels belonging to the Austrian, Danish, Dutch, British, French, Portuguese or Swedish East India companies.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colonial empire</span> Overseas possessions of a nation-state

A colonial empire is a collective of territories, either contiguous with the imperial center or located overseas, settled by the population of a certain state and governed by that state.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Factory (trading post)</span> Transshipment zone (5th- to 19th-century name)

Factory was the common name during the medieval and early modern eras for an entrepôt – which was essentially an early form of free-trade zone or transshipment point. At a factory, local inhabitants could interact with foreign merchants, often known as factors. First established in Europe, factories eventually spread to many other parts of the world. The origin of the word factory is from Latin factorium 'place of doers, makers'.

<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">Swedish Africa Company</span> Swedish trading company, founded in 1649

The Swedish Africa Company was a Swedish trading company, founded in 1649 on the initiative of the Walloon-Dutch merchant Louis De Geer and his son Laurens, for whom Sweden had become a second home. The primary interest of the company was the trade on the Swedish Gold Coast, notably the trade of human beings to be sold into slavery in the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Sassoon & Co.</span>

David Sassoon & Co., Ltd. was a trading company operating in the 19th century and early 20th century predominantly in India, China and Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. D. Sassoon & Co.</span>

E.D. Sassoon & Co., Ltd. was a trading company operating in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century predominantly in India, China and Japan.

References

  1. "Trading company (definition)". Businessdictionary.com. Archived from the original on 2 October 2014. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
  2. 1 2 "Trading company (definition)". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
  3. Simmons, D. (2007). Keepers of the Record: The History of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN   978-0-7735-6049-9.
  4. Cawston, George; Keane, Augustus Henry (1896). The Early Chartered Companies (A.D. 1296-1858). p. 236. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2001 ISBN   1-58477-196-8
  5. "East India Company" (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Volume 8, p.835
  6. Papers Relating to the Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, 1696-1707 edited by George Pratt Insh, M.A., Scottish History Society, Edinburgh University Press, 1924.
  7. Braam Houckgeest, Andre Everard Van (1798), An authentic account of the embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the court of the emperor of China, in the years 1794 and 1795, London: R. Phillips, OCLC   002094734 v.2
  8. "Freedoms, as Given by the Council of the Nineteen of the Chartered West India Company to All those who Want to Establish a Colony in New Netherland". World Digital Library . 1630. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  9. Law, Robin (1997). "The First Scottish Guinea Company, 1634-9". The Scottish Historical Review. 76 (202). Edinburgh University Press: 185–202. doi:10.3366/shr.1997.76.2.185. JSTOR   25530774.
  10. Davies, K.G. (1999). The Royal African Company, Volume 5. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   0415190770.
  11. Koninckx, Christian (1980). The first and second charters of the Swedish East India company (1731-1766): a contribution to the maritime, economic and social history of north-western Europe in its relationships with the Far East. Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert.

Further reading