ABSTRACT
The introduction of English company legislation to the Australian colonies could be described in similar terms. One aspect of the history of ‘modern’ company law that has largely been ignored has been the question of the effects of the introduction of English limited liability legislation into a wide diversity of colonies with very different economic and cultural traditions. In the Australian colonies the English Companies Act of 1862 was adopted essentially unaltered by local legislatures during the mid-1860s. In the Australian colonies there was one additional factor that reinforced the local adherence to the English model. The principal factor in this ‘failure’ of limited liability legislation in the Australian colonies was the absence of any effective regulatory structures to prevent malpractices such as dummying. Disinterest in the limited liability corporate form was even more pronounced in the Australian colonies during the nineteenth century.
