Parting Companies: The Glorious Revolution, Company Power, and Imperial Mercantilism

Abstract

This article revisits the late seventeenth-century histories of two of England's most successful overseas trading monopolies, the East India and Royal African Companies. It offers the first full account of the various enforcement powers and strategies that both companies developed and stresses their unity of purpose in the seventeenth century. It assesses the complex effects that the ‘Glorious Revolution’ had on these powers and strategies, unearthing much new material about the case law for monopoly enforcement in this critical period and revising existing accounts that continue to assert the Revolution's exclusively deregulating effects and that miss crucial subtleties in the case law and related alterations in company behaviour. It asks why the two companies parted company as legal and political entities and offers an explanation that connects the fortunes of both monopoly companies to their public profile and differing constituencies in the English empire and the varying non-European political contexts in which they operated.

Dreams of Order and Freedom: Debating Trade Management in Early Seventeenth-Century England

“…27 Moreover, the legitimacy of regulated companies as institutions entrusted with promoting order continued to be a point of contention throughout the remainder of the century, until they were dealt a critical blow after 1688 by a parliament intent on implementing a national commercial policy based on external protection, rather than corporate control (Ormrod 2003, pp. 44-51;pettigrew and Van Cleve 2014). Ironically, then, the ultimate triumph of seventeenth-century free traders in their crusade against the privileges of merchant companies was an integral part of the process leading to the emergence of protectionism in the British Empire.…”

Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints - Dreams of Order and Freedom: Debating Trade Management in Early-17th Century England

“…Moreover, the legitimacy of regulated companies as institutions entrusted with promoting order continued to be a point of contention throughout the remainder of the century, until they were dealt a critical blow after 1688 by a parliament intent on implementing a national commercial policy based on external protection, rather than corporate control (Ormrod 2003, pp. 44-51;Pettigrew & Van Cleve 2014). Ironically, then, the ultimate triumph of 17 th -century free traders in their crusade 27 For a more detailed assessment of the Statute of Monopolies in relation to debates that preceded its promulgation, see Ashton (1979, pp.…”