EconAir

The Mughal emperor Shah Alam hands a scroll to Robert Clive, the governor of Bengal, which transferred tax collecting rights in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company.  Illustration: Benjamin West (1738–1820)/British Library INTRODUCTION   The English East India Company (EIC) was an innovative new type of corporation. It was a model for the modern limited-liability, stockholder-funded modern corporation. The EIC also the prototype for the modern multinational corporation created to develop global trade. THE EIC: STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY The East India Company (EIC) was chartered in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I to promote and monopolize English trade with Asia. England, a poor country in the 1600s but with colonial ambitions after defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588, outsourced its colonial ambitions to the East India Company and other private companies.    The East India Company was originally privately funded by 218 merchants and other investors. It was the ...

  Earliest known photograph of slaves and cotton, around 1850 Brigit Katz, Smithsonian Magazine, December 6, 2019 A New Nation, America from 1789 to 1860 If you study American history from 1789 to 1860 (just before the start of the Civil War), the political history is very complicated. But remember what caused most of these political conflicts and uneasy compromises - the dynamic changes in the underlying economy. Two in particular – the spectacular increase in slave-produced cotton and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They were related.   What is the Industrial Revolution? At its heart it is power-driven metal machinery producing huge quantities of goods. At first, the power was supplied by steam engines and water wheels. Later, in the 20 th  century, electricity. All of this used huge amounts of fossil fuels – first coal, later oil and natural gas were added. America had huge quantities of all three.   A trend that continued from colonial times was the r...