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Before the East India Company
- gumby 7y agoMy wife and I used to debate which were the most important inventions in history but both of us agreed that the joint stock corporation was in the top 5 along with the wheel, gear, and control of fire.
- saagarjha 7y agoA gear is equivalent to a wheel with a large coefficient of friction. Is there a particular reason you consider it to be a separate invention?
- 55555 7y agoinvention (n): the action of inventing something, typically a process or device. device (n): a thing made or adapted for a particular purpose The purpose is different.
- saagarjha 7y agoSure; I'm arguing that the leap necessary between wheels and gears isn't really all that huge. A gear is basically just a wheel–regardless of whether you think it's a separate invention or not it's not really that impressive as going from nothing to the wheel.
- beambot 7y agoGears provide mechanical advantage -- i.e. gear ratio.
- saagarjha 7y agoSo do two wheels of different sizes.
- jazzyjackson 7y agoA gear is a lever which uses a wheel to apply continuous leverage - I would say using wheels as force multipliers is a considerable jump in cleverness than just using them to roll around
- agumonkey 7y agoI'm sure it's more about infinite lever/ratio than the teeth.
- pjc50 7y agoGear drives don't work with flat wheels, you have to have belts or elaborate movable axles to keep them pressured together. Metal gears are also considerably difficult to make reliability. I'd be interested in a history of the gear.
- jazzyjackson 7y agoI read a surprisingly enjoyable book you might like on the history of double entry accounting, developed in the markets of Venice in the 16th century as Arabic numerals began replacing Roman numerals for their easier arithmetic. More thorough month to month bookkeeping of profits and losses was a precursor to anyone investing their own money in someone else’s business. Before that it was just Royal families funding risky excursions. The book is “Double Entry” by Jane Gleeson-White
- PenguinCoder 7y agoWow that sounds like it would be a great conversation to be a part of. Why do you put joint stock corporations as number one though ?
- gumby 7y agoOne of the nice things about marrying someone from a very different background yet with many shared interests is that life together can be really fun. That particular conversation (what are the most important inventions) probably spanned more than a decade. It was not the only such. Sometimes a topic would go into abeyance and then one of us would read something that would reignite the topic for a while. I don't think either of us would have ranked the JSC #1, but in the top 5 or so, sure. It's not like one can definitively generate a proper ranking, but some things are clearly top 25 but not top 10, for example.
- ip26 7y agoHow can you include those but not insurance?
- btown 7y agoInsurance is essentially gambling, which has existed since ancient times, backed by a too-big-to-fail institution, which is made possible in modernity by the joint stock corporation.
- pjc50 7y agoLloyds was historically structured as a partnership, specificity not a limited liability structure.
- nroets 7y agoMy vote is for moveable type: Suddenly Bibles became cheap and people could question the structure of the church. News papers came and people could debate the structure of the state. Scientific books and journals.
- noneeeed 7y agoI recommend a podcast from the World Service called "50 Things that Made the modern Economy". They are short (8min) episodes, by Tim Harford (the Undercover Economist). Some of them are the obvious, but there are also many less so items that have had surprising impacts. Obviously they are short, so not lots of details, but they always cite their sources at the end if you are inspired to read more.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoWe've been debating this recently, and I'm curious your take: is a corporation a form of artificial intelligence?
- shoo 7y agoyou might appreciate Charles Stross' take on the situation http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders...
- gumby 7y agoNo, I consider a corporation simply to be a machine operated by people. I do find it disturbing that if you run my over while driving a car you, not the car, is punished while if a corporation knowingly poisons people the people “driving” it are rarely punished at all.
- iamsb 7y agoWhat is the fifth one?
- gumby 7y agoWriting, iirc.
- OJFord 7y ago> In the course of this, in what seemed to many of its wisest minds an act of willful self-harm, the English had unilaterally cut themselves off from the most powerful institution in Europe, so turning themselves in the eyes of many Europeans into something of a pariah nation. As a result, isolated from their baffled neighbors, the English were forced to scour the globe for new markets and commercial openings further afield. This they did with a piratical enthusiasm. Cor, perhaps it was deliberate, but I was so sure this was leading up to a comment on the current political climate.
- amriksohata 7y agoIndia was one of the richest countries in the world, if not the richest before the East India company and Islamic, Dutch and British invasions. It used clay pots, not plastics and its population of 200 milloin plus had plenty of fertile land to develop agriculture and cotton - the oil of the time. It was the land that gave the world yoga, Ayurveda and the numerical system. Not to mention Indian food. Britain called it the jewel in the crown for this reason, no other country gave it more wealth than India. You could argue that the British are incredibly innefficient in one regard that they survived it's meagre population of 10 million people off the back of this and made them wealthy whilst making a larger country impoverished. India didn't need the industrial revolution, Britain did. India had natural leaf plates, Britain's and west gave it an industry that it now has to rely on which is driven by coal production and climate change driving industries. What a mess
- nextos 7y agoNo idea why this is getting downvoted, as it presents a historically correct fact. India's GDP % before the British invasion was huge: https://www.quora.com/How-much-was-Indias-GDP-before-the-British-rule https://www.quora.com/How-much-was-Indias-GDP-before-the-Bri...
- dahdum 7y agoProbably because it’s a bit misleading as your link shows. GDP per capita was low everywhere, barely above subsistence. Their % dropped when others started growing rapidly.
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- jolotriage 7y agoNope, India/China's GDP dropped upon invasion and decimation of trade routes by the Western countries with the GDP gain. People underestimate how key the US was to the opium trade in China. The US was a bigger trader than the UK/Germany/France combined at one point.
- 29athrowaway 7y ago...And then they became just vulgar drug dealers in China. "Honorable".
- DollarGuru 7y agoThe same China where manufacturers had been implicated in supplying Fentanyl to the illicit US opiate market causing widespread overdoses and death? Nobody is innocent when power corrupts.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 7y agoGetting your opposition stoned on cheap drugs is not unique to the opium wars, and China shipping fentanyl to US is certainly a case of history rhyming: > not everyone struck it rich trading in opium. It was a competitive, highly volatile market. But those who worked for Perkins and a few other firms became the city's elite — otherwise known as Boston Brahmins. The Cabots, Cushings, Welds, Delanos (the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Forbes all built fortunes on opium. > "Opium was really a way that America was able to transfer China’s economic power to America’s industrial revolution." From an eye opening article on the history of Boston: https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston-hi...
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoTimely, I'll add it to my reading list. I've just (yesterday) finished "The Corporation that Changed the World"[1], that combines history of EIC and current (well, 2006) corporations and globalisation. It jumps about a fair bit (intentionally), as he draws lessons from the now mostly repealed regulations to stop EIC happening again, but well worth a read overall. Not afraid to dig into history of an utterly out of control corporation. A darker rendering than others I have seen with some surprises. Might have been even more interesting had he published a year after the 08 banking crisis. We've failed to remember Adam Smith's take on the corporation into modernity, just the Wealth of Nations. One for me to dig into further, as his actual views on companies don't seem to match up with what we think he thought. :) There were calls to wind EIC in, or wind it up going all the way back to the 1610s, and to give India back almost from the moment they arrived. Which continued constantly until it was finally forcibly wound up. All those dodgy stock splits, Theranos and Enron type frauds, countries wondering how to tame the out of control tech titan? EIC got there first. Just as willing to defraud Britain as anywhere else. As the first English joint stock company. As a near independent sovereign corporate with powers of justice, war and currency. Ain't nothing new then. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/844131.The_Corporation_That_Changed_the_World https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/844131.The_Corporation_T...
- 29athrowaway 7y agoImagine a company like Google had an army that invaded countries that would not deregulate privacy. That would be a modern equivalent to the HEIC. It would suck.
- btown 7y agoThe Murdochs’ News Corp is arguably in that position already, albeit with the one extra step of needing to lobby politicians whose constituents are already in its thrall. https://www.google.com/search?q=murdoch+iraq https://www.google.com/search?q=murdoch+iraq
- 29athrowaway 7y agoUnited Fruit Company (present day Chiquita) has done messed up things.
- shripadk 7y agoI'll stick this here for anyone wanting to know the real history of EIC and not some fancy, all-so-rosy version presented by EIC apologists. As a constant reminder of the atrocities, plunder, destruction of culture and tradition carried by EIC in the garb of "Industrialization" and establishing "Democracy" for which Britain has never apologized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
- screye 7y agoA great podcast on the same : https://www.behindthebastards.com/podcasts/part-one-the-most-evil-company-in-history.htm https://www.behindthebastards.com/podcasts/part-one-the-most...
- rramadass 7y agoRead also the book; "Empire in Asia: How We Came by It. A Book of Confessions" by W.M.Torrens for a hard-hitting look at what the British actually did in India https://archive.org/details/empireinasiahow00torrgoog/page/n11 https://archive.org/details/empireinasiahow00torrgoog/page/n...
- lkrubner 7y agoFor a more general overview of world trade during the early modern era, I recommend Fernand Braudel: https://www.amazon.com/Wheels-Commerce-Civilization-Capitalism-15th-18th/dp/0060150912/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=fernand+braudel+civilization+and+capitalism&qid=1569737710&s=gateway&sprefix=fernand+&sr=8-4 https://www.amazon.com/Wheels-Commerce-Civilization-Capitali...
- rramadass 7y agoFor a more honest perspective, see; "Empire in Asia: How We Came by It. A Book of Confessions" by W.M.Torrens https://archive.org/details/empireinasiahow00torrgoog/page/n11 https://archive.org/details/empireinasiahow00torrgoog/page/n...
- peteretep 7y agoFor more honest than what, exactly? Did you read the linked article? Your comment sounds like reactionary nationalism
- rramadass 7y agoHmm... You seem to be triggered by my dismissal of Dalrymple. And yes, i have read the article (and a even better excerpt in The Guardian earlier). The problem i have is that, he is too far removed from that time and too much inclined to keep things "nice" rather than calling a spade a spade. You cannot look at the actions of the EIC from a purely mercantile viewpoint. You have to acknowledge the inherent racism and rampant thievery with a complete absence of ethics/morals which were disguised under the garb of "Trade" and "Civilization". There is a reason for the existence of the phrase "Perfidious Albion" to describe British treachery over the ages. William McCullagh Torrens was an enlightened Irish Politician of the 19th century when India was still suffering under Colonialism. He wrote in detail about how the Indian Kings/Nawabs were lied to, duped and fleeced of their wealth and power via promises made but never kept. There was absolutely no regard for the common man's life. He writes (page 7); "Our duty is not to judge others, but ourselves; to beware of covetousness and of being betrayed into passive complicity by unpardonable laziness to seek, or still more despicable cowardice to own, the truth ... We are accountable, as a free-speaking and freely represented people, for all that may hereafter be done in our name; and if upon investigation, which with honour and in conscience we are not at liberty to elude, we are convinced ... that a great debt of reparation is due to India by this country, we are bound to use every just and fair occasion to press for restitution..." In this age of expediency, no British Historian/Journalist would ever utter such a thing. I highly recommend going through the Torrens book.
- rramadass 7y ago
- iamsb 7y agoI recommend reading this book as a supplement. https://www.amazon.in/Inglorious-Empire-What-British-India/dp/1849048088 https://www.amazon.in/Inglorious-Empire-What-British-India/d...