Front Cover -- Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics -- Copyright page -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Senior Editorial Board -- Student Editorial Board -- Editorial Statement -- Series Editor's Introduction -- Introduction: New Forms of Organization and the Coordination of Political and Commercial Actors -- The Significance of the Chartered Companies -- Existing Research -- References -- The Ideology of the Imperial Corporation: "Informal" Empire Revisited -- The Early Modern Corporate Empire: Practice and Theory -- Informal Corporate Empire in the Nineteenth Century -- "Formal" Corporate Empire: The Case of George Goldie -- Conclusion: Corporate Empires -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Principal Agent Relations and the Decline of the Royal African Company -- The Royal African Company, its Origins, its Decline -- The Failure of the RAC -- Principal Agent Relations, Quiet and Noisy -- Meaning Games -- Nested Agency Relations -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Raisins d'Etat: Trade, Politics, and Diplomacy in the History of the Levant Company -- A Marriage of Convenience: The Embassy and the Currant Trade in the Sixteenth Century -- "Mere Merchants": Prestige and Diplomatic Competition in Istanbul -- A Peaceable Trade: Failures of the Levant Company and Insufficiency of "Economic" Means -- Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Colonial Institutions and Trade Patterns -- Colonialism and Economic Development -- Trade Dynamics -- The "Trade" Period, 1601-1757 -- The "Colonial" Period, 1757-1835 -- Data -- Dependent Variable -- Independent Variable -- Control Variables -- Descriptive Analysis -- The Model -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgment -- References -- Private Trade and Monopoly Structures: The East India Companies and the Commodity Trade to Europe in the Eighteenth Century.

The Size of the East India Company Trade -- Company Organization -- Regulations on Private Trade -- The China Trade and Specific Commodities -- Private Trade and Company Flexibility -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Appendix: European East India company private trade allowances -- General Regulations -- Examples of Actual Permissions on Specific Company Ships -- A Closed Elite? Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers and the Abolition of Slave Trading -- Data Sources -- Local Politics and Elite Closure -- The Fragmented Network of the Slave Traders -- Alternative Sources of Cohesion -- Success of the Abolitionist Campaign -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Own, Rent, or Rent-Seek?: Vertical Integration in Historical Chartered Monopolies -- The Companies and Their Hire versus Own Patterns -- Competitive Trading Environments -- Non-Rent-Seeking Explanations -- Asset Specificity and Specific Relationships -- Relationship-Specific Investments before Departure -- Relationship-Specific Investments after Departure -- Costly Monitoring -- Capacity Utilization -- Shipowners and Corporate Control -- Rent-Seeking Explains the Hiring Choice -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgment -- References -- Appendix: Data description -- Bottlenecks and East Indies Companies: Modeling the Geography of Agency in Mercantilist Enterprises -- Description of the Model -- Dyads and Triads: Varying Scenarios -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Scientists as Free Riders: Natural Resource Exploration and New Product Discovery in the Dutch East India Company -- Managing Innovation -- Bioprospecting under the Dutch East India Company -- Private Incentives and Public Resources: Andreas Cleyer -- Personal Projects and Public Products: Rumphius -- Public Roles and Private Research in Europe.

Public Power and Personal Pursuits: Hendrick Aadrian van Rheede tot Drakestein -- Conclusions -- References -- Archival Materials -- An Ancient Scheme: The Mississippi Company, Machiavelli, and the Casa di San Giorgio (1407-1720) -- Back to the Mediterranean: The Origins of the Corporations -- The Casa di San Giorgio and the Fortune of its Model -- The Origins of John Law's Scheme -- Using Machiavelli -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Archival Sources -- "A State in Disguise of a Merchant?" The English East India Company as a Strategic Action Field, ca. 1763-1834 -- Introduction -- Views of the Company in Social Science and in History -- Strategic Action Fields: The Company as a Russian Doll -- Indices of Transformation -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References.