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Imperial Science and the Company’s Museum
- verisimi 4y ago> But then, the East India Company was a strange beast. Chartered on the last day of 1600, the Company was a joint-stock corporation that grew to control most of the Indian subcontinent and wield a mercenary military larger than Britain’s army. Though a private monopoly, it was also a “quasi-independent state body,” writes Ratcliff, closely tied to the British Crown. The 1811 invasion of Dutch Java, for instance, was a combined Royal Navy and East India Company affair. And the British government would bail the joint-stock corporation out financially more than once on the “it’s-too-big-to-fail” model of state-capitalism. And this explains so much of what we find today. There is no clear delineation between government and corporations. One country's corporations will work with another country even (EIC + the Dutch) for their benefit. > the East India Company _was_ a strange beast The trick is to make you think that the East India Company is a relic of the past. Rather than the model that is in use everywhere. Vanguard, BlackRock anyone?
- feet 4y agoRemember, consolidation of corporate power in government is classic fascism Its been going on for a while
- jhbadger 4y agoI think the reference to "too big to fail" (as was the justification for numerous 2008 bailouts) suggests that the author has already made your observation in regard to modern analogues.