Description

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The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company’s practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

The Corporation That Changed the World is the first book to reveal the Company’s enduring legacy as a corporation. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall. For decades, the Company was simply too big to fail, and stock market bubbles, famines, drug-running and even duels between rival executives are to be found in this new account.

For Robins, the Company’s story provides vital lessons on both the role of corporations in world history and the steps required to make global business accountable today.

About the Author

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Nick Robins has more than 20 years experience in the policy and practical realities of corporate accountability. A historian by training, he currently works on sustainable and responsible investment in London, and has written on the East India Company for the Financial Times, New Statesman and Resurgence.

Praise For…

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"A powerful analysis of the rise and fall of the British East India Company, a private company that conquered a subcontinent and subjugated an entire people." – Huw Bowen, Professor of Imperial and Maritime History, Swansea University

"Elegantly written and sharply argued, Nick Robins' gripping account of the rise and fall of the English East India Company brings to life a crucial episode in the history of globalization." – Sankar Muthu, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

"The book is a brilliant, important contribution to an understanding of development and poverty." – Mari Marcel Thekaekara, New Internationalist