The Corporation: A Global History from the East India Company to Amazon

Catalog description

Corporations, today, are ubiquitous. Most choices in our modern world are structured not only by governmental rules and regulations, but by a dizzying number of corporations. From the range of groceries or clothes we can buy online or in stores, to the number and price of flights that service our hometown, to the job we are likely to get after college, to the packages we can mail and receive to any point around globe: all these services are provided by corporations. Alongside the state, corporations are therefore one of the most powerful institutions of 21st century collective life. But if the corporation is everywhere, what even is it? And more importantly: where does it come from, and why did it develop? Through this course, we will read and interrogate a diverse cast of readings to answer these fundamental—if highly debated—questions. We will trace the historical origins and evolution of the corporate form: from early chartered monopolies like the East India Company created by Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1600, all the way to Amazon. Ultimately, we will come to a better grasp of how the corporation—in all its various legal incarnations in Britain, the U.S. and India—forged our modern world.