Chartered company
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A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonisation.
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[edit] History
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. This 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:
- Treat with African rulers such as King Lobengula
- Form banks
- Own, manage and grant or distribute land
- Raise its own police force (the British South Africa Police).
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.
[edit] Notable chartered companies and their abbreviations/ years of formation
(lists incomplete)
[edit] British crown charters
- Muscovy Company (1555)
- Spanish Company (1577)
- Eastland Company (1579)
- Turkey Company (1581)
- Morocco Company (1588)
- East India Company (HEIC, became the largest colonial empire in the 19th century) (1600)
- Levant Company (merger of the Turkey and Venetian Companies) (1605)
- Virginia Company (1606)
- French Company (1609)
- Massachusetts Bay Company (1629)
- Providence Island Company (1629)
- Royal West Indian Company (1664–74)
- Hudson's Bay Company Canada (1670)
- Royal African Company (1672)
- Greenland Company (1693)
- South Sea Company (1711)
- Sierra Leone Company (c1792)
- African Company of Merchants (abolished 1821)
- British North Borneo Company (1881)
- Royal Niger Company (1886)
- British South Africa Company (1889)
[edit] French
- Company of One Hundred Associates (1613)
- Compagnie de l'Occident (1664)
- Compagnie du Mississippi (1717)
- Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique
- Compagnie des Indes Occidentales
[edit] German
- German New Guinea Company (1884)
- German East Africa Company (1884)
- German West African Company (1882)
- Brandenburg African Company on the later Prussian Gold Coast (1682)
[edit] Portuguese
- Companhia da Guiné (1482)
- Companhia de Moçambique (1888)
- Companhia do Niassa (1891)
[edit] Low Countries
- Dutch East India Company (VOC) (1602)
- Nordic Company 1614-1642: whaling
- New Netherland Company (1614)
- Dutch West India Company (1621)
- Ostend Company (Habsburg's Southern Netherlands, in India) (1717)
[edit] Scandinavian
- Danish East India Company governed Danish India from Trankebar (1616)
- Danish West India Company (1671)
- Royal Greenland
- New Sweden Company (1638-1655), created in connection with the Swedish colony New Sweden (Nya Sverige), absorbed by the Dutch, in present Delaware.
- Swedish Africa Company (1649-1667) on the short-lived Swedish Gold Coast.
- Swedish East India Company (1731-1813)
- Swedish West India Company (1786-1805), created in connection with the colonisation of Saint Barthélemy.[1]
- Swedish Levant Company (1738-mid 1670s), a failed attempt to organise Swedish trade in the eastern Mediterranean region.[1]
[edit] Other
[edit] Sources and references
- ^ a b Björn Hallerdt (1994). Sankt Eriks årsbok 1994: Yppighet och armod i 1700-talets Stockholm (in Swedish). Stockholm: Samfundet S:t Erik, 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
[edit] See also
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