ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the parliamentary debates involving the companies. My perspective on the political debates concerning the companies, particularly my emphasis on economic influences, is different than that of many historians who have been reluctant to attribute the political survival of the companies to their performance as companies. I will draw more direct linkages between the economic performance of the companies, the parliamentary attacks on the companies and the outcome of the debates than is usual in the historiography. For example, the influence of political economists has been raised by several historians in explaining the attacks on the companies. This has been a particular focus of historians who have examined the debates of the 1690s. While I acknowledge that ideology was a factor in the 1690s, I will argue that so too was the economic contribution of the companies. My analysis of the eighteenth-century parliamentary debates and the criteria used to evaluate the debates suggests that they were even more firmly based on the economic specifics of individual trades. Political economists may have provided some of the context for the debates involving the HBC and the Levant Company in the mid-eighteenth century, but I believe their influence on the debates themselves was minimal. My contention is that the factor that best explains the political treatment of the companies is their economic performance.
