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]

Dutch

• 1599-1602 Brabantsche Compagnie
• 1602–1799 Dutch East India Company (VOC)
• 1614 New Netherland Company
• 1614 Australische Compagnie
• 1614–1642 Noordsche Compagnie (Nordic Company)
• 1621–1792 Dutch West India Company^{[note 2]}
• 1683-1795 Sociëteit van Suriname
• 1720 Society of Berbice
• 1841 Compagnie belge de colonisation [fr]

English

• 1407 Company of Merchant Adventurers of London
• 1552 Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers
• 1553 Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands
• 1555 Muscovy Company
• 1577 Spanish Company
• 1579 Eastland Company
• 1581 Turkey Company
• 1583 Venice Company
• 1585 Barbary Company
• 1592 Levant Company^{[note 3]}
• 1600 East India Company^{[note 4]}
• 1606 Virginia Company
• 1606 Plymouth Company
• 1609 French Company
• 1610 London and Bristol Company
• 1616 Somers Isles Company
• 1618 Guinea Company
• 1619 New River Company
• 1620 Council for New England
• 1629 Massachusetts Bay Company
• 1629 Providence Island Company
• 1635 Courteen association
• 1664–1674 Royal West Indian Company
• 1670 Hudson's Bay Company
• 1672 Royal African Company
• 1691 Hollow Sword Blade Company
• 1693 Greenland Company
• 1694 Bank of England

French

• 1625 Compagnie de Saint-Christophe
• 1627 Company of One Hundred Associates
• 1664 Compagnie de l'Occident
• 1717 Mississippi Company (Compagnie du Mississippi)
• 1635 Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique
• 1660 Compagnie de Chine
• 1664 French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes orientales)
• 1664 French West India Company (Compagnie des Indes occidentales)

German

• 1682 Brandenburg African Company
• 1752 Emden Company
• 1882 German New Guinea Company
• 1884 German East Africa Company
• 1885 German West African Company
• 1891 Astrolabe Company

Polish-Lithuanian

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

Portuguese

• 1482 Companhia da Guiné
• 1628 Portuguese East India Company
• 1888 Companhia de Moçambique
• 1891 Companhia do Niassa

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

See also: Casa de Contratación

• 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

See also

• American Colonization Society
• Articles of association
• Articles of incorporation
• Articles of organization
• British colonisation of the Americas
• Certificate of incorporation
• Charter
• Collegium
• Congressional charter
• Government-sponsored enterprise
• Hong (business)
• South Manchuria Railway and Chinese Eastern Railway

Notes

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

References

1. Tony Webster (25 May 2015). "British and Dutch Chartered Companies". Oxford Bibliographics. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
2. Duffield, William Bartleet (1911). "Chartered Companies" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 950–952.
3. 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.

External links

• Chartered companies
• Colonial flags of Mozambique
• Hudson's Bay Company
• WorldStatesmen
• Newspaper clippings about chartered companies ambitions in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW