COMPANY (from Fr. compagair. OP, co. panic, it. rompagnia, from Lat earn-, together penis, bread). A number of persons associ ated together in a joint enterprise, usually of a mercantile character.
rilARTERED COMPANIES. As a legal term, 'company' was first employed in conneetion with the great chartered companies of the period of adventure and exploration in England during the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, The essence of these companies was the possession of certain exelnsive privileges conferred by royal charter, either a monopoly of trade With certain countries or regions of the earth, or more or less extensive power of colonization and government: or, as was usually the case, a combination of the two. These companies were of two distinct types, viz.: the trading company. to which in dividual merchants were admitted on certain conditions, and thee traded each on his own at-count; and the joint-stock company, in which the trade was carried on in behalf of all its members by the managing beard and officers of the company. The latter might be either incor porated (in which case it differed only in the extent of its powers and the character and range of its operations from the modern business cor poration), or unincorporated (in which case it was simply a great partnership, of the type known to us as a joint-stock association). In all eases, however, it was usual to vest in the company, or in its officers or managing directors, legal jurisdiction over its members. and, in the case of the colonizing companies. a territorial jurisdiction as well. The famous company, known as the :Merchant Adventurers of Eng land, whose beginnings can be traced back to the year 1339. was originally of the type of trading companies, but was incorporated two hundred years later by a charter of Elizabeth. The East land Company, the Russia (or ;Muscovy) Com pany, the Levant (or Turkey) Company, were of the same character. The great colonizing companies under whose auspices the first Eng lish settlements in the New World were made— as the Virginia Company. chartered in 1009: the Alassachusetts Bay Company. chartered in 1629—
were of a composite character. being incorpo rated for the express pm-pose of founding new colonies. but organized for trading purposes on the principles of the regular trading companies. The East India Company, on the other hand, chartered in 1600 as a trailing company, pure and simple, became a joint-stock company in 1612, and the Hudson's Bay Company, incor porated by royal charter in 1670 (which, shorn of most of its ancient privileges, is still in active existence), is also for trading purposes a joint sto•k association.
The extensive powers of government, and even the legal jurisdiction over their own members, formerly vested in these old trading companies, have long since been resumed by the Crown. Their present significance lies in the fart that they constitute the beginnings and the founda tion of the colonial empire of Great Britain. But the principles on which they were organized and conducted are, with sonic modifications, still revognized and acted upon in that. country. Chartered companies for purposes of trade and colonization in territories not under the sway of Christian powers are still created, and some such Companies of recent origin have played an important ride in the history and politics of the past twenty years. Among these may be men tinned the North Borneo Company, chartered in ; the Royal Niger Company, in ISM: the British East Africa Company, in 1SS3, and the British South Africa Company, in the same year. All of these companies have had qualified rights of sovereignty and powers of government vested in them, and they have all continued the rule of the older companies in expanding the limits of the British Empire. See Anderson, Origin of English Commerce; Cunningham, tiro ictli of English Industry and Commerce; Schanz. Eng lisehc Ilandelspolieik ; Cayston and Keane, Early Chartered Companies; Westlake, Interna tional Law (London, 1880) : Hall. Treatise on the Foreign Powers Jurisdiction of the British Crown (Oxford, Eng., 1894) : and the comprehensive treatise of Bonassieux, Les grundes compagnies de commerce (Paris, 1892).