In 1910 the world had approaching a half-million corporations, only one-hundredth of today's total. About one-fifth, and over half of corporate capital, was publicly-tradable, higher portions than today. Most publicly-quoted corporations traded in Europe and the British Empire, but most close (private) corporations operated in the US, which, until the 1940s, had more corporations per capita than anywhere else. The 83 countries surveyed differed markedly in company numbers, corporate capital/GDP ratios and average corporate size. Enclave economies -dominated by quoted (and often foreign-owned) companies -had the largest average sizes, while other nations had more varied mixes of large quoted corporations and close company SMEs.We are grateful for comments on earlier versions to James Foreman-Peck, Chris Kobrak, Lyndon Moore, Viv Nelles, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Janette Rutterford, participants in seminars in Antwerp, Cambridge, Hong Kong, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, Hitotsubashi and Yale and three anonymous referees. The plural authorial "we" honours the many national scholars who have advised on individual countries and are thanked in the online statistical appendix but errors are (singularly) mine alone.