THE SYSTEM OP CHARTERED COMMERCIAL COMPANIES
(1550-1700)
The priority of Portugal and Spain in distant adventure did not secure
them from the competition of the other nations of Europe, whose
awakening activity, ambition, and enterprise perceived clearly the
advantages of the New World and of the new routes to the south and
east. Almost within the first decade of the sixteenth century an
Englishman cries out: "The Indies are discovered and vast treasures
brought from thence every day. Let us, therefore, bend our endeavors
thitherwards, and if the Spaniards or Portuguese suffer us not to join
with them, there will be yet region enough for all to enjoy."
[Footnote: Lord Herbert (1511), quoted in Macpherson, Annals of
Commerce, II., 39.] Soon England, France, and the Netherlands were
sending exploring and trading expeditions abroad, and somewhat later
they all aimed at colonial empires comparable with that of Spain. These
colonial settlements were chiefly made for commercial profit and
depended closely on a new and peculiar type of commercial organization,
the well-known chartered companies. It was these companies which
established the greater number of American colonies, and the ideals,
regulations, and administrative methods of corporate trading were
interwoven into their political fabric.
Revolutions in commerce have been as frequent, as complete, and, in the
long run, as influential as have been revolutions in political
government. Europe in the fifteenth century had a clearly marked and
well-established method of international commerce; yet before the
sixteenth century was over a fundamentally different system grew up,
which was destined not only to characterize trade during the next two
hundred years, but, as has been said, to exercise a deep influence on
the settlement and government of colonies in general and on the policy
of their home governments.
A complete contrast exists between international trade in 1400 and
1600. The type of commerce characteristic of the earlier period was
carried on by individual merchants; that belonging to the later period
by joint-stock companies. Under the former, merchants depended on
municipal support and encouragement; under the latter they acted under
charters received from national governments. The individual merchants
of the earlier period had only trading privileges; the organized
companies of the later time had political powers also. In the fifteenth
century the merchants from any one city or group of cities occupied a
building, a quarter, or fondaco, in each of the foreign cities with
which they traded; in the seventeenth they more usually possessed
independent colonies or fortified establishments of their own on the
coasts of foreign countries. In the earlier period trading operations
were restricted to Europe; in the later they extended over the whole
world.
The essential elements of the organization of trade at the period
chosen for this description are its individual character, its
restriction to well-marked European limits, and its foundation upon
concessions obtained by town governments.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century there were five principal
groups of trading cities, whose merchants carried on probably nine-
tenths of the commerce of Europe. These groups were situated: (1) in
northern Italy; (2) in southern France and Catalonia; (3) in southern
Germany; (4) in northern France and Flanders; (5) in northern Germany.
Two of them were in the south of Europe, and found their most
considerable function in transmitting goods between the Levant and
Europe; the Hanse towns of northern Germany, at the other extremity of
Europe, carried the productions of the Baltic lands to the centre and
south; the Flemish and south German groups, intermediate between the
two, exchanged among themselves and transmitted goods from one part of
Europe to another. There were of course, vast differences of
organization among the trading towns. Venice and Cologne, Barcelona and
Augsburg, Bruges and Lubeck were too far separated in distance,
nationality, the nature of their trade, and the degree of their
development to have the same institutions. And yet there were many
similarities.
The city authorities obtained for their citizens the privileges of
buying and selling within certain districts and under certain
restrictions, and very frequently of having their own warehouses,
dwelling houses, and selling-places. Examples are to be found in the
fondachi of Venice, Genoa, and other Italian, French, and Catalan
cities, established in the Greek and Mohammedan districts of the
eastern Mediterranean, on the basis of grants given by the rulers of
those lands and cities. Just as characteristic examples can be found in
western Europe; in London the "Steelyard" was a group of warehouses,
offices, dwellings, and court-yards owned jointly by the towns of the
Hanseatic League, and occupied by merchants from those towns who came
to England to trade under the concessions granted them by the English
government. [Footnote: Lappenberg, Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes
zu London.] The south Germans had their fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice,
and the north Germans their "St. Peter's Yard" in Novgorod. The
Venetian merchants trading to the city of Bruges usually met for
mercantile purposes in the house of a Flemish family named Van de
Burse, a name which is said to have given the word "bourse" to the
languages of modern Europe. [Footnote: Mayr, in Helmolt, History of the
World, VII., 81.]
The union among the merchants of any one city or league was one for
joint trading privileges only, not for corporate investment or
syndicated business. Each merchant or firm traded separately and
independently, simply using the warehouse and office facilities secured
by the efforts of the home government, and enjoying the permission to
trade, exemption from duties, and whatever other privileges might have
been obtained for its merchants by the same power. The necessity for
obtaining such concessions arose from the habit of looking at all
international intercourse as to a certain degree abnormal, and of
disliking and ill-treating foreigners. Hence the Germans in London, the
Venetians in Alexandria, the Genoese in Constantinople, for instance,
needed to have permission respectively from the English, the Mameluke,
and the Greek governments to carry on their trade. Although they found
it highly desirable for many reasons to hold a local settlement of
their own in those cities, such a possession was not a necessary
accompaniment of the individual and municipally regulated commerce of
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Where but a few
traders made their way to any one market, and that only irregularly,
they lodged with natives, sold their goods in the open market-place,
organized no permanent establishment, and had no consulate. On the
other hand, where trade was extensive and constant, the settlement was
like a part of the home land located in the midst of a foreign
population.
As the fifteenth century progressed many influences combined to bring
about a change in this system. The most important one of these
influences was the growth of centralized states in the north, centre,
and west of Europe. As Russia, Denmark, Sweden, England, Burgundy, and
France became strong, the self-governing cities within these countries
necessarily became politically weak; and the trading arrangements they
had made among themselves became insecure. Strong nationalities were
impatient of the claims of privilege made by foreigners settled or
habitually trading in their cities; the interests of their own
international policy often indicated the desirability of either
favoring or opposing bodies of merchants, which in the time of their
weakness the governments had treated with exactly the opposite policy;
finally, the desire of their own citizens for the advantages of their
own foreign trade often commended itself to the rulers as an object of
settled policy. [Footnote: Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik.] In other
words, national interests and municipal interests were often opposed to
one another.
Internal difficulties in many cities and internal dissensions in the
leagues of cities helped to weaken the towns as guarantors of the trade
of their citizens. As a result of these political influences, before
the fifteenth century was over the distribution of commerce was much
changed and municipal control was distinctly weakened. The Italian and
the German cities became less active and wealthy, while London, Lisbon,
Antwerp, and many other centres grew richer. Individual cities and even
leagues of cities ceased to be able to negotiate with other
municipalities or with potentates to obtain trading privileges for
their citizens, since such matters were now provided for by commercial
treaties formed by national governments. One of the main
characteristics of earlier commerce, its dependence on city
governments, thus passed away.
Then came the opening up of direct commerce by sea with the East
Indies, the discovery of America, and the awakening of ambition,
enterprise, and effort on the part of new nations to make still further
explorations and to develop new lines of commerce. The old organization
of commerce was profoundly altered when its centre of gravity was
shifted westward to the Atlantic seaboard, and Europe got its Oriental
products for the most part by an ocean route. Cities which had for ages
had the advantage of a good situation were now unfavorably placed.
Venice, Augsburg, Cologne, and a hundred other towns which had been on
the main highways of trade were now on its byways. Many of these towns
made strenuous, and in some cases and for a time successful, efforts to
conform to the new conditions. [Footnote: Mayr, in Helmolt, History of
the World, VII, 64-66.] Vigorous industry, trade, and commerce
continued to exist in many of the old centres, and some of the most
famous "merchant princes" of history, such as the Fuggers and the
Medici, built up their fortunes in the old commercial cities in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nevertheless, these were the
exception rather than the rule, and such successes were due to
financial rather than commercial operations. In a general sense the old
commerce of Europe, so far as it followed its accustomed lines,
suffered a grievous decline. More important than the decay of the old
method was the growth of the new. A vast mass of new trade came into
existence; spices and other Oriental products, now that they were
imported by the Portuguese and afterwards by Spanish, Dutch, French,
and English, by direct routes and by water carriage, were greatly
cheapened in price, and thus made attainable by many more people and
much more extensively consumed. The early explorers of America failed
to find either the route to the East or the Eastern goods which they
sought, but they found other articles for which a demand in Europe
either already existed or was ultimately created. Sea-fish abounded on
the northeastern coasts of America to a degree that partially made up
their loss to the disappointed seekers for a northwest passage. Whale
oil and whalebone were obtained in the same waters. Dye-woods, timber,
and ship stores were found on the coasts farther south. Furs became one
of the most valued and most permanent imports from America. Gradually,
as habits in Europe changed, other products came to be of enormous
production and value. Sugar stands in the first rank of these later
products; tobacco, cocoa, and many others followed close upon it. As
colonists from Europe became established in the New World they must be
provided with European and Asiatic goods, and this gave additional
material for commerce. Besides creating an increased commerce with the
East and a new commerce with the West, the awakened spirit of
enterprise and the new discoveries widened the radius of trade of each
nation. Men learned to be bold, and the merchants of each European
country carried their national commerce over all parts of Europe and
far beyond its limits to the newly discovered lands. English, Dutch,
French, and Danish merchants met in the ports of the White Sea and in
those of the Mediterranean, and competed with one another for the
commerce of the East and the New World. Trading to a distance was the
chief commercial phenomenon of the sixteenth century, and was more
influential than any other one factor in the transformation of commerce
then in progress. Distant trading proved to have different requirements
from anything that had gone before: it needed the political backing of
some strong national government; it needed, or was considered to need,
a monopoly of trade; and it needed the capital of many men.
These requirements were not felt in Portugal and Spain as they were in
the other countries of Europe, because each of those countries had
control of an extensive and lucrative field of commerce, and because in
them government itself took the direction of all distant trading. The
Portuguese monopoly of the trade with the coast of India and with the
Spice Islands was practically complete. Through most of the sixteenth
century her ships alone rounded the Cape of Good Hope; her only rivals
in trade in the East were the Arabs, who had been there long before
her, and their traffic was restricted to a continually diminishing
field.
Until Portugal was united with Spain in 1580, and after that until
Holland broke in on the Portuguese-Spanish monopoly of the East Indies
in 1595, her control of Eastern commerce was as nearly perfect as could
be wished. [Footnote: Cunningham, Western Civilization, II., 183-190.]
Government regulation of this commerce extended almost to the entire
exclusion of individual enterprise. The fleets which sailed to the East
Indies were determined upon, fitted out, and officered by the
government, just as those of Venice were. [Footnote: Saalfeld,
Geschichte des Portugessche Kolonialwesens, 138, etc., quoted in
Cunningham, II., 187.] The Portuguese annual fleet sent to the Indies
counted sometimes as many as twenty vessels. In the one hundred and
fifteen years between 1497 and 1612 eight hundred and six ships were
sent from Portugal to India, [Footnote: Hunter, Hist. of British India,
I., 165.] all equipped for the voyage and fitted out by the government
with cannon and provided with armed forces.
The management of the fleet was in the hands of the government office
known as the Casa da India. The merchants who shipped goods in these
vessels and brought cargoes home in them were, it is true, independent
traders, carrying on their business as a matter of private
enterprise;[Footnote: Cunningham, Western Civilization, II., 187.] but
they were subject to government regulations at every turn and supported
by government at every step. At first foreign merchants were admitted
to the Eastern trade under these conditions, but subsequently it was
restricted to Portuguese, and ultimately became a government monopoly.
Under this system Lisbon became one of the greatest commercial cities
of the world. Venetian, Florentine, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and
Hanse merchants took up their residence in Lisbon, purchased East
Indian goods from the merchants who imported them, and dealt in other
imports and exports resulting from this activity of trade.[Footnote:
Mayr, in Helmolt, History of the World, VII., 70.] In Spain the
government regulation of commerce was scarcely less close. All goods
which were sent from Spain to America must be shipped from the one port
of Seville, and they must be landed at either one or other of two
American ports--Vera Cruz, in Mexico, or Portobello, on the Isthmus of
Panama. Two fleets were sent from Seville each year, one for each of
these destinations. All arrangements for these fleets, all licenses for
those who shipped goods in them, and all jurisdiction over offences
committed upon them were in the hands of the government establishment
of the Casa de Contractacion at Seville. [Footnote: Veitia Linage,
Spanish Rule of Trade to the West Indies, book I., chap. iii.] No
intruders were allowed in the Spanish colonies; the only persons who
could take part in the trade were merchants of Seville, native or
foreign, who were specially licensed by the government. Monopoly as
well as government support was thus secured to the distant traders
between Spain and her colonies in the West and in the East Indies.
For two hundred years this system of government fleets in Portugal and
Spain was kept almost intact. Since the government provided merchants
with military defence and economic regulation, since it minimized
competition among them and guaranteed to them a monopoly of commerce in
the regions with which they traded, there was small need of
organization or of a union of forces among them. Consequently
commercial companies are almost unknown in Portuguese and Spanish
history. [Footnote: Moses, Spanish Rule in America, 166-171.] In Spain
and Portugal government control of trade was at a maximum. In the other
countries of Europe, notwithstanding occasional plans for such control,
as in the Netherlands in 1608, [Footnote: Jameson, Usselinx,43.] the
part which government took in commercial matters was much less, the
part taken by private merchants was far greater. In fact, many of the
earliest trading ventures were of an almost purely individual
character. The patent given by Henry VII. to the Cabots in 1497,
similar letters granted in 1502 to certain merchants of Bristol,
[Footnote: Rymer, Faidera (2d ed.), XIII., 37.] a grant to Robert
Thorne in 1527, the long series of authorized expeditions from 1575 to
1632 in search of the northwest passage, the charters given to Humphrey
Gilbert in 1578 and to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, and many other
patents made out in the sixteenth century to prospective colony
builders, all were granted to individuals or to groups of loosely
organized adventurers. [Footnote: Brown, Genesis of the United States,
I., 1-28.] In contrast both with government--controlled commerce and
with purely private trading and enterprise, the chartered companies of
England, Holland, France, Sweden, and Denmark arose. They were by no
means self-controlled and independent companies; they were dependent on
their governments for many rights and privileges and for constant
support, protection, and subsidy. On the other hand, the governments
expected them not only to develop a profitable trade but to furnish
certain advantages to the nation, such as the creation of colonies, the
increase of shipping, the provision of materials for use in the navy,
the humiliation of political rivals, the preservation of a favorable
balance of trade, and ultimately the payment of imposts and the loan of
funds. They stood, therefore, midway between unregulated individual
trading, in which the government took no especial interest, and that
complete government organization and control of trade which has been
described as characterizing the policy of Portugal and Spain.
Some fifty or sixty such companies, nearly contemporaneous, and on the
same broad lines of organization, are recorded as having been chartered
by the five governments mentioned above, a few in the second half of
the sixteenth century, the great proportion within the seventeenth
century. [Footnote: Some are enumerated in Cawston and Keane, Early
English Chartered Companies, a still larger number in Bonnassieux, Les
Grandes Compagmes du Commerce.] Of course, some of these companies were
still-born, never having gone beyond the charter received from the
government; some existed only for a few years; and some were simply
reorganizations. The formation of these companies marks a distinct
stage of commercial development, and furnishes a valuable clew to the
foundation and early government of European colonies in America.
England, Holland, France, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as Scotland and
Prussia, each had an "East India Company"; Holland, France, Sweden, and
Denmark each had a" West India Company"; England, Holland, and France
each had a "Levant" or "Turkey Company"; England and France each had an
"African Company"; and a date might readily be found in the seventeenth
century when all these were in existence at the same time. The
following list of such companies shows their number and simultaneity.
The list cannot claim to be exhaustive or absolutely accurate, for the
history of many such organizations is extremely obscure, the dates of
their foundations questionable, and some companies chartered at the
time were, perhaps, not commercial in their nature.
1554. (English) Russia or Muscovy Company.
1576. (English) Cathay Company (first).
1579. (English) Baltic or Eastland Company.
1581. (English) Turkey or Levant Company.
1585. (English) Morocco or Barbary Company.
1588. (English) African Company (first).
1594. (Dutch) Company for Distant Lands.
1596. (Dutch) Greenland Company.
1597-1599. (Dutch) East India Companies (early).
1598-1599. (French) Canadian Companies (early).
1600. (English) East India Company.
1602. (Dutch) East India Company.
1602. (French) Company of New France.
1604. (French) North African Company (first).
1604. (French) East India Company (first).
1606. (English) London and Plymouth Companies.
1609. (English) Guiana Company.
1610. (English) Newfoundland Company. 1611. (French) East India Company
(second).
1612. (English) Bermuda Company.
1614. (Dutch) Company of the North, or Greenland Company.
1615. (French) East India Company (third).
1616. (Danish) East India Company (first).
1618. (English) African Company (second).
1619. (Danish) Iceland Company (first).
1620. (English) New England Company.
1620. (French) Montmorency Company.
1621. (Dutch) West India Company.
1624. (Swedish) Company for Asia, Africa, America, and Magellania.
1626. (French) Company of Senegal (first).
1626. (French) Company of Morbihan (first).
1626. (French) Company of Saint Christopher (first).
1626. (Swedish) South Sea Company.
1626. (Swedish) East India Company.
1628. (French) Company of One Hundred Associates of New France.
1628. (French) North African Company (second).
1629. (English) Company of Massachusetts Bay.
1629. (Dutch) Levant Company (first).
1631. (English) African Company (third).
1633. (French) West Africa Company (first)
1634. (Dutch) Surinam Company.
1634. (Danish) East India Company (second).
1635. (English) China or Cathay Company.
1635. (French) Company of West India Islands.
1640. (French) Company of East Africa.
1643. (French) Company of North Cape of South America.
1644. (French) Company of St. Jean de Luz.
1644. (French) Baltic Company.
1647. (Danish) Iceland Company (second).
1650. (Dutch) Levant Company (second).
1651. (French) Cayenne Company.
1655. (French) West Africa Company (second).
1660. (French) China Company.
1662. (English) African Company (fourth).
1664. (French) East India Company (last).
1664. (French) West India Company (last).
1664. (English) Canary Company.
1669. (French) Northern Company (last).
1670. (French) Levant Company.
1670. (English) Hudson Bay Company.
1671. (Danish) West India Company.
1671. (French) Bordeaux-Canada Company.
1672. (English) African Company (last).
1673. (French) Senegal Company (last).
1683. (French) Acadia Company.
1684. (French) Louisiana Company.
1684. (French) Guinea Company.
1686. (Danish) East India Company (last).
1697. (French) China Company (last).
1698. (French) Santo Domingo Company.
When the English commercial companies were to be chartered, it was not
necessary to invent an entirely new type of organization. A model
already existed ready to hand in the Society of Merchants Adventurers,
of which the origin goes back certainly to the fifteenth century,
perhaps still earlier. [Footnote: Lingelbach, Brief Hist. of the
Merchant Adventurers, xxi.-xxv.] The sphere of trade of this body of
exporting merchants extended along the coasts of France, the
Netherlands, and Germany, opposite England, and some distance into the
interior. [Footnote: Ibid,, xxvi.] It is true that the Merchants
Adventurers had many mediaeval features which assimilated them more to
the old merchant and craft guilds than to the more modern type of
chartered commercial companies which were about to come into existence.
They had, like the craft guilds, a system of apprenticeship and
different degrees of advancement in their membership. [Footnote:
Lingelbach, Internal Organization of the Merchant Adventurers, 8-18.]
The members were all controlled by a "stint," according to which an
apprentice in the last year of his term might ship one hundred pieces
of cloth in the year; while a full freeman in the society could ship
from four hundred to one thousand pieces a year, according to the
length of time he had been a member. [Footnote: Lingelbach, Laws and
Ordinances of the Merchant Adventurers, 67-74.] They were under strict
regulations against forestalling and undue competition. They could
display and sell their cloth only upon Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays, and "No person shall stand watchinge at the corners or ends of
streetes, or at other mens' Packhouses or at the house or place where
anie clothe merchant or draper ys lodged, nor seeinge anie such in the
street shall run or follow after hym with Intent to Entyce or lead hym
to his packhouse, upon pain of fyve pounds ster." [Footnote:
Lingelbach, Laws and Ordinances of the Merchant Adventurers, 89, 91.]
In many respects, on the other hand, the Merchants Adventurers were
quite similar to the later chartered companies, whose period of
existence their own overlapped. In fact, considering the early date of
their origin, the tardy development of English economic life, and the
obstacles to trading in a foreign country even so near as the
continental seaboard, the conditions which confronted them were much
the same as those which the later companies had to meet, and they met
them in much the same way. They obtained a charter of incorporation
from the king; they possessed a monopoly of trade in a certain
territory, as against other men of their own nation; they had a common
treasury for joint expenses; and they acted as, and were even called,
"the English nation," in the foreign country which was their abiding-
place. [Footnote: Lingelbach, Internal Organization, 29-34; Laws and
Ordinances, passim; and Charters of 1462 and 1564.] The Merchants
Adventurers, therefore, might be looked upon as a late surviving
mediaeval merchant guild, modified in form by the necessity of adapting
itself to trading in a foreign country; or it might be considered as
the earliest of the modern chartered commercial companies, still
retaining in the seventeenth century some of its mediaeval features.
Viewed in either aspect, the Merchants Adventurers were a living model
for the organization of the new type of companies, and the powers and
form of government of the latter show a similarity to the older company
which is certainly not accidental.
The five or six English companies whose dates of foundation lie within
the sixteenth century all yield in importance, interest, and later
influence to the East India Company, which was destined to an almost
imperial existence of two centuries and a half, and which may well
serve as the representative of the English chartered companies. Its
origin was closely connected with the international relations of the
last decades of the sixteenth century.
The availability of the port of Lisbon as the western distributing
centre for Eastern goods ceased in 1580, when Portugal became a part of
the dominions of the king of Spain. As war already existed between
Spain and the Netherlands, and was soon to break out between Spain and
England, commerce was much disturbed; and after a few years of troubled
intercourse that port was closed to the merchants of Holland and
England. The union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal at this time had
much the same effect on the supply of Eastern goods to these two
Protestant seaboard states that the conquests of the Turks in the
eastern Mediterranean had had for the Italian cities a century before.
It was not likely that the two most vigorous, free, and commercially
enterprising states of Europe would allow themselves long to be
excluded from the most attractive and lucrative trade in the world.
After England, in her resistance to the Armada in 1588, applied the
touchstone to the naval prestige of Spain and showed its hollowness,
her merchants and mariners took heart and pressed directly to the East.
In 1591 an English squadron of three ships, under Captains Raymond and
Lancaster, with the queen's leave, sailed down the western coast of
Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, followed the east coast to
Zanzibar, and then passed across to Cape Comorin, Ceylon, and the Malay
peninsula. They had mixed fortune, but one vessel returned home laden
with pepper, obtained for the most part from the hold of a Portuguese
prize. In 1595 the first direct Dutch voyage was made along much the
same route. Other English and Dutch voyages followed; and in 1600 and
1602, respectively the English and Dutch East India companies were
chartered. The following analysis of the charter of the former of these
companies will give the main characteristics of the new commercial
system: [Footnote: Charters Granted to the East India Company, 3-26,]
1. The charter, granted by Queen Elizabeth on December 31, 1600, was
addressed by name to the earl of Cumberland and two hundred and fifteen
knights and merchants, whom it created a corporation and a body politic
under the name of "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London
Trading to the East Indies."
2. The territory to which they were given privileges of trade consisted
of all continents and islands lying between the Cape of Good Hope and
the Straits of Magellan--that is to say, the east coast of Africa, the
southern shore of Asia, the islands of the Indian Ocean, and the west
coast of America; so long as they made no attempt to trade with any
port at the time of the charter in the possession of any prince in
league with Elizabeth, who should protest against such trade.
3. The corporation was for all time; but the privileges of trade under
the charter were granted for fifteen years, with a promise, if they
should seem profitable to the crown and the realm, to extend them for
fifteen years more; and with a reservation, on the other hard, of the
power to terminate them on two years' notice.
4. The powers of the company were those of an ordinary corporation and
body politic. The members of the company and their employees possessed
a complete monopoly of trade in the regions described, so far as
English subjects were concerned, having, moreover, the right to grant
licenses to non-members to trade within their limits.
5. They could buy land without limitation in amount, and as a matter of
fact the company gained its first foothold in each of its stations in
the East by buying a small piece of land from the native government.
6. The company could send out yearly "six good ships and six pinnaces
with five hundred mariners, unless the royal navy goes forth," and
these ships should not be seized even in times of special naval
restraint, unless the queen's need was extreme and was announced to the
company three months before the ships were impressed.
7. They had the right, in assemblies of the company held in any part of
the queen's dominions or outside of them, to make all reasonable laws
for their government not in opposition to the laws of England, and they
could punish by fine and imprisonment all offenders against these laws.
8. Nothing is said in the original charter of the powers of offence and
defence, alliance and military organization; but these were probably
taken for granted, as they were so generally used by merchants and
navigators at the time, and were, as a matter of fact, exercised
without limitation by the company from its first voyage.
9. Especial privileges and exemptions were granted to the company by
freeing its members from the payment of customs for the first four
voyages, by giving them from six to twelve months' postponement of the
payment of subsequent import duties, and by allowing them re-export of
Indian goods free from customs duties. The laws against the export of
bullion were also suspended in their favor to the extent of allowing
them to send out on each voyage 30,000 pounds in coin.
10. The organization of this company was comparatively simple,
consisting of a governor, deputy governor, and twenty-four members of a
directing board, "to be called committees," [Footnote: The word
"committee" at that time was used for a single person, as in the case
of "trustee," "nominee," "employee," and similar terms] all to be
elected annually in a general assembly or court of the company. The
governor and committees must all take the oath of allegiance to the
English sovereign.
The East India Company remained for some years a somewhat variable
body, as each voyage was made on the basis of a separate investment, by
different stockholders, and in varying amounts. But in 1609 the charter
was renewed, and in 1612 a longer joint-stock investment fixed the
membership more definitely. By this time the company had become, in
fact, as permitted by its charter, a closely organized corporation,
with well-understood and clearly defined rights and powers, and it was
soon started on its career of trade, settlement, conquest, and
domination. [Footnote: Hunter, "Hist of British India," I, 270-305.] A
new type of commercial organization had become clearly dominant.