Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism

"Brilliant, ambitious, and often surprising. A remarkable contribution to the current global debate about Empire and a small masterpiece of research and conceptual reimagining."
—William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
An award-winning historian places the corporation—more than the Crown—at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising questions about public and private power that were just as troubling four hundred years ago as they are today.
Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial...