Corporate Constitutionalism and the Dialogue between the Global and Local in Seventeenth-Century English History

Abstract

This forum discusses the utility of ‘corporate constitutionalism’ as a category of historical analysis. Corporate constitutionalism privileges the constitutional activities of international trading corporations to understand the cross-cultural dynamics at work in European expansion. William A Pettigrew sets out the possibilities of corporate constitutionalism in the first essay which defines the concept, makes the case for viewing trading corporations as constitutional entities at home and abroad, signals some possible interpretive benefits for historians of empire, corporate historians, global historians, and constitutional historians, before offering an illustrative case study about the Royal African Company. Leading thinkers in international history (David Armitage), legal history (Paul Halliday), constitutional theory (Vicki Hsueh), and corporate history (Thomas Leng and Philip J Stern) offer their reflections on the possibilities of this new approach to the international activities of trading corporations. Although the Forum focuses on seventeenth century English trading corporations, it proposes to start a discussion about the utility of corporate constitutionalism for other European corporations and for periods both before and after the seventeenth century.

Company-states and the creation of the global international system

“…Our argument builds on new revisionist historiography, which critiques earlier views of company-states as either purely commercial operations, or simply dependent appendages of their home states, instead stressing their autonomous and hybrid character (Cavanagh, 2011;Clulow, 2014;Clulow and Mostert, 2018;Pettigrew, 2015;Pettigrew and Verveers, 2019;Stern, 2011Stern, , 2015Wagner, 2018;Ward, 2008;Weststeijn, 2014;Wilson, 2015). Thus, Stern notes that previously the company-states have "suffered historiographical marginalization by virtue of scholarly assumption about what companies do and do not do: states are for politics, companies are for profits " (2006: 702).…”

Global constitutionalism in the early modern period: the role of empires, treaties and natural law

“…Nor is it unprecedented for TNCs to operate as 'shadow sovereigns' (Tully et al 2016, p 7). In the days of Grotius, both the Dutch and English East India Companies operated as corporations alongsideand often in competition with -the two corporate bodies known as the Dutch and English states (Stern 2011; see also Pettigrew 2015). Paramount state sovereignty, either as a reality or as a norm in international law, is a rather recent phenomenon.…”

The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750

“…36 And yet, as William Pettigrew has made clear, it was the 'array of grants from Asian officials and rulers' which actually made possible the Company's 'right to mint money, to trade without paying customs, and to set-up trading factories and forts, to exercise legal jurisdiction over its employees and a growing range of Company subjects, and to establish its rule over towns and settlements.' 37 Charters from its domicile nation-state proved just one central strand in a sprawling web of non-European constitutional and judicial rights which allowed the Company to operate in Asia. The outer threads of this web, the multitude of grants, farmans and treaties offered by Asian states, elites and communities, proved more decisive in forming the overall shape of the web, anchoring the Company legitimately and securely within a diverse range of political and economic structures in Asia.…”