ABSTRACT
The English East India Company (EIC) was chartered under Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 to raise capital for voyages and trade to the East Indies (Indian Ocean). This private company had twenty-four directors, who were elected by the shareholders, and was modeled after a number of preexisting smaller Dutch corporations that eventually merged into the Vereenigde OostIndische Compagnie (VOC) in 1602. These English and the Dutch companies were unique in their initial separation between the ownership of capital and its management by a professional class of merchants and salaried administrators; the emerging principles of capitalism were found in the constitutions of these chartered trading companies.
