The Corporate View of history: 1600 – 2100

We are not used to viewing world history through the perspective of the corporation for the very good reason that corporations are a recent invention, and instances that had the ability to transform the world in magical ways did not really exist till the EIC was born. Businesses of course, have been around for a while. The oldest continuously surviving business, until recently, was Kongo Gumi, a Japanese temple construction business founded in 584 AD that finally closed its doors in 2009. Guilds and banks have existed since the 16th century. Trading merchants, who raised capital to fund individual ships or voyages, often with some royal patronage, were also not a new phenomenon. What was new was the idea of a publicly traded joint-stock corporation, an entity with rights similar to those of states and individuals, with limited liability and significant autonomy (even in its earliest days, when corporations were formed for defined periods of time by royal charter).

This idea morphed a lot as it evolved (most significantly in the aftermath of the East India Bubble), but it retained a recognizable DNA throughout. Many authors such as Gary Hamel (The Future of Management), Tom Malone (The Future of Work) and Don Tapscott (Wikinomics) have talked about how the traditional corporate form is getting obsolete. But in digging around, I found to my surprise that nobody has actually attempted to meaningfully represent the birth-to-obsoloscence evolution of the idea of the corporation.

Here is my first stab at it (I am working on a much more detailed, data-driven timeline as a side project):

To understand history — world history in the fullest sense, not just economic history — from this perspective, you need to understand two important points about this evolution of corporations.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 880