Rogers, James E. Thorold; Rogers, Arthur G. [Hrsg.]: The industrial and commercial history of England: lectures delivered to the University of Oxford (London, 1892)

VI.

THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF CHARTERED TRADE
COMPANIES.
Antiquity of maritime laws—Regulated and joint-stock companies—
Their origin and excuse—The East India Company—The Bank
of England—The South Sea Compaiiy—The variations hi the price
of Stock—Collapse of the South Sea Company—The suppression
of the East India Company—The Bank Act of 1844.
There is no trace, as far as I know, and I have read with much
interest that vast repository of facts, the geography of Strabo, of
joint-stock enterprise in antiquity, still less of the policy by
which government attempts to develop trade by conferring a
monopoly upon a body of projectors or adventurers. The utmost
which we may be said to know was that the Island of Rhodes was
the first to codify international maritime law, and that from the
precedents collected and reduced to system by this enterprizing
and prosperous seat of commerce, the commercial part of the civil
code was ultimately compiled, and, much more important, that of
the principles of international maritime law. But there is no hint
that the societas, or collegium mercatorum, went beyond the
limits of a guild. I shall have, indeed, in dealing with trade
companies, to examine one of the forms of these trade guilds.
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