Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Legal Framework
- PART I BEFORE 1720
- PART II 1721–1810
- PART III 1800–1844
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 The Rise and Decline of the Major Trading Corporations
- Appendix 2: Capital of Joint-Stock Companies Circa 1810
- Bibliography
- Index of Cases
- Index of Statutes
- General Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Legal Framework
- PART I BEFORE 1720
- PART II 1721–1810
- PART III 1800–1844
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 The Rise and Decline of the Major Trading Corporations
- Appendix 2: Capital of Joint-Stock Companies Circa 1810
- Bibliography
- Index of Cases
- Index of Statutes
- General Index
Summary
The timing of the eventual transformation in 1844 can be explained by a number of factors. First, the awareness that developed after the middle of the eighteenth century on the part of entrepreneurs in the transportation and insurance sectors that joint stock is a beneficial feature of finance at least for some sorts of enterprises. Second, the recognition, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and particularly after the court decisions of 1807–1812, that the only efficient, not to mention legal, way to employ joint stock is by combining it with the conception of the corporation to form the joint-stock business corporation. Third, the realization, after 1825, that Parliament could not deal with each incorporation individually, and in the 1830s, that the Law Officers of the Crown would not be able to take Parliament's place in that respect. Fourth, the split of the link between incorporation and monopoly between 1813 and 1833, when the East India, Bank of England, and Marine Insurance monopolies were abolished. Fifth, the legitimization of investment in shares and in the share market in general, due to the spread of share ownership during the canal era, in other utilities after 1800, and particularly in the railway era, gathering momentum in the 1830s and 1840s. Sixth, the concept of registration as a method for facilitating and regulating associations, which had developed by the 1830s outside of the pure business context.
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- Information
- Industrializing English LawEntrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720–1844, pp. 287 - 294Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000