ABSTRACT
The conclusion argues that territorial power and control over populations were prominent issues in the history of San Giorgio and of early corporations. The history of finance is deeply enmeshed with the story of corporate power over lands and peoples. It summarizes the main points of the book and concludes with a passage by Karl Marx (Das Kapital, I, 24) who drew a link between the public debt of Italian cities of the Renaissance, particularly Venice and Genoa, and the global corporations of the seventeenth century such as the EIC and the VOC. Among the many analyses and commentaries by scholars and economists on these subjects, his is one of the few that connects Renaissance public debt and the origins of financial corporations. The conclusion uses Marx to corroborate the ties between San Giorgio, which focused on public debt, and later corporations. San Giorgio’s main characteristics became a model for the establishment of corporations such as the VOC, the Bank of England, and John Law’s Mississippi Company.
