Chartered company

A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonization.

History

Typically, these companies were formed from the sixteenth century onwards by groups of European investors to underwrite and profit from the exploration of Africa, India, the Caribbean and North America, usually under the patronage of one state, which issued the company's charter. This enabled states to use private resources for exploration and trade beyond the means of the limited resources of the treasury, which is a liberal form of indirect rule; some companies did themselves employ a form of indirect rule of territories through traditional leaders, such as princely states with whom they (not the European state) made treaties.

Chartered companies were usually formed, incorporated and legitimised under a royal or, in republics, an equivalent government charter. This document set out the terms under which the company could trade; defined its boundaries of influence, and described its rights and responsibilities.

For example, the charter of the British South Africa Company, given by Queen Victoria, allowed the company to:

Treat with African rulers such as King Lobengula
Form banks
Own, manage and grant or distribute land
Raise its own police force (the British South Africa Police).

In return, the British South Africa Company agreed to develop the territory it controlled; to respect existing African laws; to allow free trade within its territory and to respect all religions.

Chartered companies in many cases benefited from the trade monopolies (such as the English Royal African Company, which held a monopoly on African slaving from 1672 to 1698).

In order to carry out their many tasks, which in many cases included functions - such as security and defence - usually reserved for a sovereign state, some companies achieved relative autonomy. A few chartered companies such as the British Honourable East India Company (HEIC) and Dutch Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) had military and naval forces of their own that dwarfed even the average European state's armed forces, and adequate funds to buy the best men and equipment, in effect making them a state within a state.

More chartered companies were formed during the late nineteenth century's "Scramble for Africa" with the purpose of seizing, colonising and administering the last 'virgin' African territories, but these proved generally less profitable than earlier trading companies. In time, most of their colonies were either lost (often to other European powers) or transformed into crown colonies. The last chartered company to administer territory directly in Africa was the Companhia de Moçambique in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique), which handed over rule of the colonies of Manica and Sofala to the Portuguese crown's colonial government in 1942.

Notable chartered companies and their abbreviations/ years of formation

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

British crown charters

The British East India Company's headquarters in London.

1555 Muscovy Company
1577 Spanish Company
1579 Eastland Company
1581 Turkey Company
1588 Morocco Company
1600 East India Company (HEIC)^a
1605 Levant Company^b
1606 Virginia Company
1609 French Company
1629 Massachusetts Bay Company
1629 Providence Island Company
1664–1674 Royal West Indian Company
1670 Hudson's Bay Company
1672 Royal African Company
1693 Greenland Company
1711 South Sea Company
c.1792 Sierra Leone Company
African Company of Merchants (abolished 1821)
1835 South Australian Company
1839 New Zealand Company
1881 British North Borneo Company
1886 Royal Niger Company
1889 British South Africa Company

^a Became the largest colonial empire in the 19th century.
^b Merger of the Turkey and Venetian Companies.

French

1613 Company of One Hundred Associates
1664 Compagnie de l'Occident
1717 Compagnie du Mississippi
Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique
Compagnie des Indes Occidentales

German

Portuguese

Low Countries

^a Habsburg's Southern Netherlands, in India.

Scandinavian

1616 Danish East India Company^a
1671 Danish West India Company (1671)
Royal Greenland
1638–1655 New Sweden Company^b
1649–1667 Swedish Africa Company^c
1731–1813 Swedish East India Company
1786–1805 Swedish West India Company^d
1738 Swedish Levant Company^e

^a Governed Danish India from Trankebar.
^b Created in connection with the Swedish colony New Sweden (Nya Sverige); absorbed by the Dutch; presently in Delaware.
^c On the short-lived Swedish Gold Coast.
^d Created in connection with the colonisation of Saint Barthélemy.[1]
^e A failed attempt to organise Swedish trade in the eastern Mediterranean region.[1] It was illegal to speak french there.

Sources and references

^ ^a ^b

Chartered companies
Colonial flags of Mozambique
Ferguson, Niall, 2003. Empire—How Britain Made the Modern World, Allan Lane, London, United Kingdom.
Hudson's Bay Company
Ross, R., 1999. A Concise History of South Africa, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
WorldStatesmen