The Institutional Dynamics of Early Modern Eurasian Trade: The Commenda and the Corporation

Harris, Ron

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1294095

Cited by 40 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Inspired by the New Institutional Economics that economist Douglass North popularized in the 1980s and 1990s through works on world economic history, these scholars explore the institutional (in New Institutional Economics terms, “institutional”) underpinnings of Muslim economic successes and failures throughout Islamic history (North, ; North, ; North & Thomas, ). The work of Timur Kuran on Islamic law and economic development in the Middle East over the longue durée has become the flagbearer of the movement, which has found echoes in writings by Ghislaine Lydon, Jared Rubin, and Ron Harris, among others (Harris, ; Kuran, , ; Lydon, ; Rubin, ).…”

Section: Islamic Law and Comparative Capitalismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Histories of law and economic life in the Islamic world

Bishara

2020

History Compass

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In this article, I survey the long‐standing debate on the place of Islamic law in the history of capitalism. I first mark out a literature that has thought, either explicitly or implicitly, in comparative terms about the capitalist trajectories of the Islamic world and “the West,” and has grappled with the place of Islamic law in shaping that trajectory; I then explore a parallel literature that sidestepped the question of capitalist development altogether in favor of a more textually grounded approach to the study of Islamic law and Muslim economic life. I end with a set of reflections on how to better situate the study of Islamic law and capitalism in a more textured historical context, drawing on a nuanced literature on colonial legal history. Rather than studying Islamic law and capitalism within a sealed‐off civilizational container, as many had done in the past, I suggest that a more fruitful approach might involve embracing a broader world of connections, circulations, and historical entanglements.

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Section: Islamic Law and Comparative Capitalismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Histories of law and economic life in the Islamic world

Bishara

2020

History Compass

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“…In keeping the focus on the activities of the Company in the Gangetic plains and on understanding practices variously termed and understood as hoarding, the piece does not engage the rich literature on risk pooling, early forms of bilateral limited partnership contracts, hundi and commenda / subha practices in the subcontinent and the western Indian Ocean trading world (Pearson, ; Dasgupta, ; Aslanain, ; Subramaniam, and ; Prange, ). Rather, it remains focused on economic activities that were also practices of risk pooling, but which, unlike commendas and subha, were never codified in merchant books or jurist writings as economic‐juridico institutions (Harris, ), but were rather considered practices that straddled the margins of the market or economic spheres (Mathew, ). Commendas were highly complex early modern business organizations that sustained both Silk Route and Indian Ocean trading from as early as the 11th century, enjoying the backing of sovereign powers, merchants, and jurists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Provincializing the history of speculation from colonial South Asia

Bhattacharyya

2018

History Compass

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This article proposes that South Asia has produced rich histories of economic practices understood variously as hoarding, speculation, and extortion. This essay frames the discussion of speculation in South Asian history along these three axes. First, it puts the term speculation under scrutiny to look at its changing meanings within the colonial and metropolitan context in order to assess how the term enters the colonial archive of law and finance. Especially, it looks at how the colonial officials created and sustained (mis)translations between indigenous practices and Anglo‐European categories of economic crimes. Second, it looks at the early scholarship on 18th and 19th century indigenous commercial practices that were coded as hoarding, speculating, profiteering, hedging, and squeezing in an attempt to rescue the colonial bazaar and what has been called its “inside history” alongside the development of market practices. This body of scholarship remains primarily focused on trading activities under the Mughals and East India Company. In the third and final section, we turn to the recent histories that have returned to vernacular commercial practices and the historical roots of India's market society to raise critical questions about how speculation and calculation shaped late colonial capitalism and governmentality.

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“…Ron Harris (2009: 613, 2020a: 255–256) distinguishes several approaches in the historiography of the modern corporation: the first views it as a Roman invention; the second and third as a concept revived and applied by canonists and civilists, respectively, after the rediscovery of the Code of Justinian in the late 11th century; and the fourth sees it as originating in the medieval Germanic tribal traditions. From all four perspectives, it is clear that the idea of a corporate body endowed with a separate legal personality and its own pool of assets is distinctly European.…”

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confidence: 99%

Conceptualizing the business corporation: insights from history

Gindis

2020

Journal of Institutional Economics

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The purpose of this symposium is to shed light on the genealogy of the idea of a business corporation, an economic institution which has long been regarded with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Each of the four original contributions addresses the history of some of its key features. In the process, each contributor reveals some of the insights that history has to teach us regarding the central concepts that inform contemporary debates about the nature of the corporation, the contours of the corporation's purpose, the sources of corporate power, the functions of corporate law, the duties of directors, the status of shareholders, and the legitimacy of corporate rights.

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The Institutional Dynamics of Early Modern Eurasian Trade: The Commenda and the Corporation

Cited by 40 publications

References 48 publications

Histories of law and economic life in the Islamic world

Histories of law and economic life in the Islamic world

Provincializing the history of speculation from colonial South Asia

Conceptualizing the business corporation: insights from history

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