ABSTRACT
The dramatic failure of the South Sea Company had legal and political ramifications, which helped to shape the emerging industrial capitalism from which the modern company law doctrines arise. In this period, the state sought to control speculative elements of the economy through general incorporation Acts, it then sought to encourage investment and speculation with limited liability. In addition, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, industrial capitalism was establishing itself and throughout the century would come to dominate the old merchant capitalism and finance capitalism. In early capitalism, companies traded and shareholders claimed profit. By the nineteenth century, the judiciary used this barely used eighteenth century law, the Bubble Act, to strike down large partnerships that were acting like corporations. The government then began to regulate using general incorporation Acts, much tainted by decades of unincorporated associations' legal norms.
