InstitutionClaim Cited
British East India Company
The East India Company combined investor ownership with chartered jurisdiction, trade, taxation, diplomacy, and a predominantly Indian army. Its territorial revenue and military capacity reinforced one another, while the people who financed, worked for, supplied, petitioned, and lived under the organization held radically unequal authority. Parliamentary regulation redistributed control among directors, ministers, and governors before the Crown formally took over Company government in 1858.
How did a merchant corporation exercise and enlarge state-like authority, and why did repeated oversight reforms fail to make that authority accountable to the people it governed?