Chartered company

A chartered company is an association with investors or shareholders that is incorporated and granted rights (often exclusive rights) by royal charter (or similar instrument of government) for the purpose of trade, exploration, or colonization, or a combination of these.^[1]

Notable chartered companies (with years of formation)

Austrian

1719 Imperial Privileged Oriental Company
1722 Ostend Company
1775 Austrian East India Company^{[note 1]}

British

1711 South Sea Company
1752 African Company of Merchants (abolished 1821)
1792 Sierra Leone Company
1824 Van Diemen's Land Company
1825 Canada Company
1825 New Zealand Company
1835 South Australian Company
1840 Polynesia Company
1847 Eastern Archipelago Company
1853 Standard Chartered
1881 British North Borneo Company
1886 Royal Niger Company
1888 Imperial British East Africa Company
1889 British South Africa Company

The article Chartered Companies in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, by William Bartleet Duffield, contains a detailed narrative description of the development of some of the companies in England and, later, Britain.^[2]

German

Polish-Lithuanian

1783–1793 Trade Company Poland (Black Sea Trade Company)

Portuguese

Russian

1799–1867 Russian-American Company

Scandinavian

1347 or earlier Stora Enso
1616 Danish East India Company^{[note 5]}
1626–1680 Swedish South Company, also called New Sweden Company^{[note 6]}
1649–1667 Swedish Africa Company^{[note 7]}
1671 Danish West India Company
1721 Bergen Greenland Company
1731–1813 Swedish East India Company
1749 General Trade Company
1774 Royal Greenland Trading Department
1786–1805 Swedish West India Company^{[note 8]}^[3]
1738 Swedish Levant Company^{[note 9]}^[3]

Scottish

1634 Guinea Company of Scotland
1698 Company of Scotland

Spanish

1728–1785 Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas
1755–1785 Barcelona Trading Company
1785–1814 Royal Company of the Philippines
Honduras Company
Seville Company
Havana Company

Italian

From 3 August 1889 to 15 May 1893 Filonardi was the first Governor of Italian Somaliland and was in charge of an Italian company responsible for the administration of the Benadir territory, called Societa' Filonardi.

1889 – 1893 Filonardi Company

Gallery

Share certificate of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated 16 June 1288
The British East India Company's headquarters in London
The arms of the British South Africa Company

Notes

^ The Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), active in India.
^ The original West India Company collapsed in 1674, and the New West India Company took its place in 1675 and persisted until 1792.
^ Merger of the Turkey Company and the Venice Company.
^ Became the largest colonial empire in the 19th century.
^ Governed Danish India from Trankebar.
^ Created in connection with the Swedish colony New Sweden (Nya Sverige); absorbed by the Dutch; presently in Delaware.
^ On the short-lived Swedish Gold Coast.
^ Created in connection with the colonisation of Saint Barthélemy.
^ A failed attempt to organise Swedish trade in the eastern Mediterranean region.

References

^ Tony Webster (25 May 2015). "British and Dutch Chartered Companies". Oxford Bibliographics. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
^ Duffield, William Bartleet (1911). "Chartered Companies" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 950–952.
^ ^a ^b Björn Hallerdt (1994). Sankt Eriks årsbok 1994: Yppighet och armod i 1700-talets Stockholm (in Swedish). Stockholm: Samfundet S:t Erik. pp. 9–10. ISBN 91-972165-0-X.

Bibliography

Ferguson, Niall (2003). Empire—How Britain Made the Modern World. London, United Kingdom: Allan Lane.
Micklethwait, John; Wooldridge, Adrian (2003). The company: A short history of a revolutionary idea. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 9780679642497.
Ross, R. (1999). A Concise History of South Africa. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521575782.