The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational

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Pluto Press, Jul 20, 2006 - Business & Economics - 218 pages
This book offers a fascinating account of the forerunner of the modern multinational: the British East India Company (1600-1874). Nick Robins shows how the East India Company pioneered the model of the corporation that we see today. Its innovations included the shareholder model of ownership, and the administrative framework of the modern firm. Global in reach, it achieved market dominance in Asia, trailblazing the British Empire in the East. In the process, the company shocked its age with the scale of its executive malpractice, stock market excess and human rights abuse. Offering a popular history of one of the world's most famous companies, Nick Robins shows what it teaches us about corporations today. Ultimately, the East India Company succumbed to popular protest and outright rebellion, first in the Boston Tea Party and then in the Indian Mutiny.

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Contents

This Imperious Company
19
Out of the Shadows
39
The Bengal Revolution
58
Copyright

7 other sections not shown

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About the author (2006)

Nick Robins has more than 20 years experience in the policy and practical realities of corporate accountability. A historian by training, he currently works on sustainable and responsible investment in London. He is the author of The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (Pluto, 2012), and has written on the East India Company for the Financial Times, New Statesman and Resurgence.

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