EMPIRE INCORPORATED: The Corporations that built British Colonialism
Mon 11 Nov 2024 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM GMT
Online, Zoom
Description
In this lecture Philip Stern challenges conventional wisdom about where power is held globally. He argues that rather than playing a subordinate role, doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. From Ireland to India, the Americas, Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. And, as Stern’s landmark work Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture capitalism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies raise questions about corporate power that are as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.
Philip J. Stern is a historian of the British Empire and the author of the award-winning book The Company-State. He is Professor of History at Duke University. His acclaimed book Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations that built British Colonialism was published in 2023.