GMGT 3030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Dutch East India Company, South Sea Company, Bubble Act
10 Feb 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The word corporation derives from corpus, the latin word for body. Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of legal rights were found in ancient rome, and the maurya. In medieval europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the popeand the city of london corporation. The point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member, existing in perpetuity. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the stora kopparbergmining community in falun, sweden, obtained a charter from king magnus eriksson in 1347. In medieval times traders would do business through common law constructs, such as partnerships. Whenever people acted together with a view to profit, the law deemed that a partnership arose. Early guilds and livery companies were also often involved in the regulation of competition between traders. Many european nations chartered corporations to lead colonial ventures, such as the dutch east.
