Abstract
There is a substantial and growing literature on the emergence of joint–stock companies (Lawson 1993; Bowen 2006; Leeson 2009; Robins 2012; Roy 2012; Kyriazis et al. 2015; Vlami 2015 amongst others) their operations and a discussion of specific aspects, as for example, the principal-agent problem (Carlos 1992; Carlos and Stephen 1996) or their influence on history, such as the expansion of European states in Asia and their transformation into empires (Boxer 1965; Rodger 1997, 2004; Gaastra 2003; Krishna 2014).
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Notes
- 1.
Portugal had already ended its own Reconquista by the thirteenth century, expulsing the Moors from its territories and was the first European country to start oceanic voyages under the guidance of Prince Henri, the so called “Navigator”, in the 1430–1460s, although he himself never navigated the Portuguese ships (Verge-Franceshi 1998).
- 2.
In ancient times, the Macedonian Hellenistic kingdoms, the Hellenistic federal states and Rome afterwards, had standing armies. The Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire followed Roman tradition, by having the professional Scholai armies.
- 3.
- 4.
For example, in ancient Athens which became a democracy in 510–507 BCE, during the first period, all citizens had the right to vote at the citizens’ Assembly, but only those of the first three property classes (comprised of the hoplites, citizen soldiers, and the cavalrymen that perhaps made up one fifth of the total citizens’ population and could be elected to the city’s main posts, generals and eponymos archon (somewhat like the President of the Democracy) or the 500 members of the Vouli, a preparatory body, combining government and parliamentary functions, (Hansen 1999). After 482 BCE, all posts were open to every citizen by ballot (except for the generals who were still elected by the Assembly).
- 5.
- 6.
For example, during the seventeenth century the Ottoman sultan arrested and executed the richest Ottoman (Greek) trader, Kantakouzenos, and expropriated his fortune. This was not an isolated occurrence.
- 7.
A detailed analysis concerning the Levant company is offered by Vlami (2015).
- 8.
An indication of the validity of contracts specifying property rights is given in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, allegedly set in Venice but reflecting English law and practices at the end of the sixteenth century. The contract was so strong that the court could not find a way not to implement it, although it would lead to the death of a Christian at the hands of a hated Jew. Only when Portia found a legal loophole in the contract could the case be decided in favour of the merchant.
- 9.
Undeclared, since some of the English expeditions against Spanish possessions in the New World, as for example Henry Morgan’s (who was not only a successful corsair but also governor of English Jamaica) against Porto Bello, Panama, etc., were undertaken in a period of nominal peace. Portugal was incorporated into the Spanish empire in 1580 and regained its independence in 1648.
- 10.
We have covered the organizational and operational aspect of corsairs in detail in Kyriazis et al. (2015).
- 11.
In ancient Athens, generals could be accused, face trial, be deposed, sent into exile, fined and even executed. For example, the victor of Marathon, Miltiades, after his unsuccessful Naxos expedition, was fined and the victorious generals (admirals, since at the time no designation existed) at the naval battle of Arginoussai (406 BCE) were tried for not having collected the Athenian dead and were condemned and executed. One example of a pirate captain being deposed was Edward of England. As to revenue sharing, Athenians decided on how to use the surplus of state revenues arising, for example, from the silver mines of Lavrion (Kyriazis and Zouboulakis 2004) on similar lines as pirate crews.
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The authors wish to thank Paschalis Arvanitidis for his comments and suggestions.
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Economou, EM.L., Kyriazis, N., Metaxas, T. (2017). The First Joint-Stock Companies: The Emergence of Democratic Elements in Business. In: Bitros, G., Kyriazis, N. (eds) Democracy and an Open-Economy World Order. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52168-8_10
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