The End of the Gamble: The Termination of the Virginia Lotteries in March 1621*

The sudden cancellation of the Virginia lotteries during the first sitting of the parliament of 1621 was not part of a general parliamentary attack on monopolies but a calculated political act intended to pressure the Virginia Company of London to pay more taxes than required by its charter of 1612. The appropriate context for considering the cancellation is the financial difficulties of James I and the search for funds by Sir Lionel Cranfield. The cancellation coincided with a rejection of a new charter for the company, possibly incited by Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in England. The cancellation of the lotteries was the most important turning point in the history of Jamestown and started the company on its downward spiral.     

Obstruction as Power: Rethinking Britain's Caucasus Occupation 1918–20

This article draws on French and British archival sources to rethink the history of Britain's 1918--1920 occupation of the Caucasus. The extant historiography casts London as eager to reinvigorate the region's oil exports in order to buoy its own supplies, but this article suggests that various elements within and close to the British administration sought to obstruct oil exports. Preventing Caucasus oil from reaching global markets seems to have helped parts of the British administration reach their aims during negotiations with the French government and Royal Dutch Shell. It also improved the viability of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company by denying valuable oil supplies to rival firms. Acknowledging the British oil interests that steered state policies during this period allows a richer story to unfold, one that demonstrates how imperial power in the wake of the Great War could be brought to serve the aims of, and even adopt the methods of, transnational oil companies operating in an emerging global fuel market.     

公司债权人保护之比较法研究——兼论新《公司法》之立法选择

传统的公司法理论,在债权人利益的保护机制上过分相信并依赖于资本的担保功能,不注重其他法律制度的设计,结果导致债权人利益的保护只停留于形式。笔者通过分析债权人保护模式上的差异,认为新公司法对债权人的保护,不仅要有事前的预防措施,也应有事后的救济途径。     

试析民国初期华侨双重国籍的负面影响——以简照南恢复国籍案为例

五四抵制日货运动中,英美烟草公司利用中国国内的抵制日货运动,趁机揭露和指责简照南加入日本籍、南洋兄弟烟草公司是日资公司。南洋兄弟烟草公司因此遭受中国民众排斥,并被农商部吊销了执照。为摆脱危机,简照南和南洋烟草公司展开了一场以挽救其中国国籍为核心的行动,并获得国内诸多团体及华侨的支持。简氏复籍终获成功,南洋烟草公司也得以恢复注册为国货公司。此案揭示,在民族主义运动中,国籍、国货身份成为重要标识,双重国籍致使国民身份模糊,有时会带来很大负面影响。     

“满洲”电业株式会社始末

本文介绍了满洲电业株式会社的发展历程、代表性发输配电设施、伪满洲国覆灭时的状况。纵观“满电”的发展史可以发现,这既是高度垄断的电力生产、管理机构,也是伪满洲国傀儡政权的重要经济支柱和日本帝国主义侵略、掠夺中国东北的重要工具。     

Patagonian Cinnamon and Pepper: Blending Geography in Alonso de Ovalle’s Tabula Geographica Regni Chile (1646)

ABSTRACT

The context and conditions under which early modern Europeans created images and maps that blended Asian and American geographies have recently received the attention of scholars. In this article I explore an example of this practice in the Chilean Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle’s mapping of Asian spices as it affected the southern region of his Tabula geographica regni Chile (Rome, 1646). I examine Ovalle’s inclusion of cinnamon and pepper in the Patagonian landscape as a persuasive allusion to the crucial role of the Strait of Magellan in his proposed revision of the trade route of the Spanish galleons.     

Iron knees in wooden vessels—an attempt at a typology

Knees were brackets in the structure of a wooden ship. They were introduced in the second half of the 18th century and were in common use for naval and merchant ships in the 19th century. They were fashioned in various designs. A typology of these is proposed based on archaeological and documentary evidence. Iron knees could used to assist the dating of unidentified shipwrecks.     

The Levant Company under Attack in Parliament, 1720–53

Parliamentary debates concerning the British chartered companies in the 18th century are an important resource which can provide a range of insights into the fate of the companies, the concerns of British economic policy, and the process of political decision making on economic issues. Of all the parliamentary debates concerning chartered companies in the 18th century, those concerning the Levant Company have received the least scholarly attention. This article examines a series of debates involving the Levant Company during the period 1720–53. These debates saw the company increasingly put on the defensive. By the middle of the century, there was, in the words of the duke of Bedford, ‘a very great outcry against companies of all kinds’. However, the debates concerning the Levant Company did not turn on competing views regarding political economy. War was an influence on the timing of the debates, but it was the economic impact of the company's deteriorating competitive position on its woollen cloth suppliers from the west country which was crucial. As French competition gained momentum, cloth exports fell and the political pressure on the company intensified. In the face of this, the company was far from defenceless in parliament. It had influential supporters and did not hesitate to pander to fears about the potential domination of its trade by jewish merchants. The company was forced to lower its admission fee in 1753, but survived and continued to operate into the 19th century.     

Royal authority versus corporate sovereignty: the Levant Company and the ambiguities of early Stuart statecraft

The ambassadorship of Thomas Bendish (1646–1660) to the Ottoman Porte was a period of turmoil that saw the arrest and imprisonment of his predecessor, Sackville Crowe, and the arrest and subsequent beheading of a usurper, Henry Hyde. This crisis in Turkey coincided with the domestic crisis of the English Civil War, which plunged the English state into chaos. This article uses the Bendish/Crowe/Hyde affair to analyse the relationship between state and trading company in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the early modern economic and state-building system of mercantilism was made. The article will show that mercantilism was, in the words of Phil Stern, an “awkward alliance” where merchant and state required one another while remaining suspicious of the other’s motives and authority.     

Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch Colonial Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: A History of Local Production and Typology of Products

Coarse earthenware production at the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Cape settlement began shortly after the Company established its mercantile entrepôt on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Made by European Company potters, these vessels reproduced the forms of the homeland in the raw materials of the colony. A history of VOC pottery manufacture and a typological examination of the products illustrates how the global movements of mercantile capitalism combined with the local circumstances of the Cape settlement to create a material form reminiscent of Europe, but purely colonial in the dynamics of its production and use.