A Commercial Soul in a Corporate Body: From the Medieval Merchant Guilds to the East India Company

This paper was presented in the framework of the workshop Companies and Company Law in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, held at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) in February 2012. In this occasion my expertise in commercial law history was recognized and the publication of the papers of the workshop gave me the opportunity to develop a topic which I had already touched in my PhD thesis, i.e., the very close link between the medieval merchant guilds and the chartered companies of the modern period. With reference to the juridical organization of the EIC, I underline the connection with the past during the first century after its foundation (e.g. voting system) rather than stressing the connections with the present structure of contemporary business corporations. The EIC is in fact usually described as an example of public company limited by shares, which is a questionable definition and cannot be applied to the EIC in the 17th century. This is my first publication in English.