Company states and international relations theory

该项目旨在调查特许公司在欧洲殖民主义中的作用。特许公司是当今跨国公司的先驱，以利润为导向，行使着广泛的主权权力（例如发动战争、进行外交和提高税收的权利），这些权力通常是政府的。本项目旨在确立特许公司（而非主权国家）作为1800年前欧洲殖民扩张的主要代理人的重要性，并揭示它们的兴衰如何塑造了现代对公共和私人权威之间区别的理解。

This project aims to investigate the role of chartered companies in European colonialism. Chartered companies, profit-driven forerunners to today’s multinational corporations, wielded extensive sovereign powers (e.g. rights to wage war, conduct diplomacy, and raise taxes) normally reserved for governments. This project intends to establish the importance of chartered companies – not sovereign states – as Europe’s pre-eminent agents of colonial expansion before c1800, and uncover how their rise and fall shaped modern understandings of the distinction between public and private authority.