Abstract

This paper explores the creation of a novel type of governance structure: the corporation-state, which combines private ownership with sovereign power. Through archival and theoretical analysis, it investigates how the British East India Company presented the first example of this structure. It presents two key factors that differentiate corporation-states: the corporate structures themselves that incentivize colonial tactics, and the conquest of political systems in the home country that diminish the power of the state in relation to the corporate entity. These underscore broader tensions about empire, legitimacy, and corporate autonomy, concepts as important today as during the rise of the Company.

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This paper was written in June 2022 for the "Corporations, Human Rights, and Social Responsibility" seminar, part of the B.S.H. in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University, and was awarded an A+.