James R. Fichter. So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo- American Capitalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. 384 pp. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-674-05057-0. Philip J. Stern. The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 300 pp. $27.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-19-993036-4. Reviewed by Aaron Windel Published on H-Business (December, 2014) Commissioned by Tracey Deutsch (University of Minnesota) How corporate capitalism came to dominate through theories and practices of early modern social relations and to exert new influences and statecraft. James R. Fichter's So Great a Proffit: controls over the conduct of populations in the How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo- global South remains an unsettled and urgent his‐ American Capitalism explores how early U.S. torical problem. Two recent books explore the trade to Asia shaped early American capitalism place of the early modern corporation in shaping and influenced Britain's mode of imperial rule. the trajectories of commercial and plantation cap‐ Their concerns and methods differ. Stern is italism and also reveal much about Atlantic-world much more interested in pinning down historical‐ and Indian Ocean political thought and national ly specific meanings of sovereignty and in dis‐ and imperial state formation. Philip J. Stern's The cussing the application of company-state power. Company State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Fichter is less interested in questions of theory Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire and political economy and instead focuses on in India examines the early modern East India class formation to track the rise of an American f‐ Company as an imperial sovereign legible nancial elite and to measure its influence in shap‐ H-Net Reviews ing free trade politics in Britain and over the At‐ Stern's study brings important new insights to lantic and Indian oceans. He wants to understand bear on the question of how European imperial how wealthy American traders competed with the states emerged, how they ruled territory and sub‐ East India Company during its decline in the late jects, and how colonial power related to sources eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Taken of authority in Europe and Britain. Crucially, he together these books trace a period from roughly blurs the distinction between a trading company 1600 to 1815, from the rise of the East India Com‐ and a state. Stern's most important contribution to pany to its subsequent military-settler occupation debates on early modern commerce and empire is and rule at key ports in the Indian Ocean, and f‐ to show that to trade in the period was in fact to nally to its eventual absorption into the liberal na‐ administer a state. Stern relies on company tion-state empire that dominated the nineteenth records (especially the more qualitative aspects— century. correspondence, legal opinions, etc.) and court Both Stern and Fichter explore the East India cases to show that company authorities through‐ trade for what it tells us about the wider shape of out the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ex‐ "Atlantic world" political thought, exchange, and plained their activities as building up spiritual imperial government. Fichter surveys a shorter and intellectual foundations for self-sustaining in‐ and later time frame than Stern over a wider frastructures of colonial government. space—anywhere the Americans searched for op‐ Central to his argument are his efforts to re‐ portunities to enhance their trade in the Pacific, cover specific early modern meanings of Atlantic, and Indian oceans, or the China Sea. His sovereignty and to understand the East India analysis emphasizes high politics and the very Company within this matrix. To do so, he explores rich—the 1 percent in fact (Fichter, p. 111). Stern's a less frequently seen thread in early modern po‐ study of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century litical thought concerning sovereignty in the cor‐ English East India Company encompasses the poration. The corporation—whether in the form smaller area of the eastern Atlantic and mostly of a chartered company like the East India Com‐ coastal zones in the Indian Ocean east of the Cape pany or a municipality in England (as in the incor‐ of Good Hope and extending to Indonesia. He porated City of London)—opened a space for gov‐ roots the East India Company in early modern ernment outside the ambit of Crown and Parlia‐ ideas about corporate sovereignty. ment. The East India Company attempted to fll Stern's book has much to teach us about the this space east of the Cape of Good Hope. role of the corporation in early modern political The company’s sovereignty was precarious. thought. As it turns out, corporations are not just Corporate authority was challenged by interlop‐ people, but almost demi-kings. Company leaders ers (unlicensed traders), pirates, rebels, and rival to be sure were intent on profiting from trade rulers. Sometimes to defend its constitutional po‐ with Asia, but they also thought of themselves as sition or the security of its vulnerable colonies, delegated sovereigns in the East and wore many the company had to appeal to the English Crown, of the habits of the absolutist states of Europe. depending on it for effective rule. Company They derived their rationale of rule from the sovereignty also was derived from—and thus lim‐ same sources of political theory as the English ited by—Asian rulers from whom the company kings. Importantly, this included connection to or‐ had received grants and signed treaties. To com‐ ganized religion. Their "traffick" in trade goods pany leaders, Stern notes, a Mughal imperial far‐ was part of their Protestant mission (Stern, p. man was as crucial as its charters from the Eng‐ 112). lish Crown for giving force to its jurisdictional 2 H-Net Reviews claims. None of this, however diminished the con‐ settlements, as company officials hoped, "as natu‐ viction among company leaders that they were rally as Crowes resort to carrion" (p. 85). the true captains at the helm of English govern‐ The violence of the company-state is as im‐ ment in the East. portant to Stern's account as the intellectual dis‐ Company sovereignty rested on religion as course that the company relied on to explain its well as politics, linked to early modern theories of right to rule. Rights claims had to be backed up by sin and indulgence that regulated a Christian the waging of war and by the routine use of com‐ kingdom's commercial interaction with non-Chris‐ pany-state violence in the form of capital punish‐ tians. Company officials-cum-political theorists in‐ ment, imprisonment, and torture. In fascinating sisted that only their delegated sovereignty stem‐ middle chapters, Stern demonstrates this underly‐ ming from the Crown, and thus ultimately from ing violence inherent in the expansion and de‐ God, could sanctify what was otherwise a sinful fense of territorial sovereignty through examples trade with the infidel. The company fused its trad‐ of the company's wars against Siam and the ing interests with a sense of Protestant mission, Mughal Empire, its sustained campaigns to stamp and in places like Bombay the company competed out piracy, and its recurring efforts to put down with Portuguese claims to "spiritual jurisdiction" colonial rebellion or to punish pretenders to com‐ (p. 208). Stern summarizes the view of the compa‐ pany offices (for instance, the rebellion of Richard ny mission held by Bombay governor Gerald Keigwin in 1683). Aungier and Madras governor Joseph Collett that These were not always stories of the compa‐ establishing a "well-ordered and morally unassail‐ ny's triumph. For instance, the Mughal admiral able Protestant society" as an example to nonbe‐ Sidi Yakub Khan's 1689 invasion of the company's lievers was a crucial part of its sovereignty and colony at Bombay routed company forces and left rule over settler enclaves (p. 112). the frm scrambling to try and secure palatable The company had its own political econo‐ terms of peace. In the coffee houses of London, mists, men like Nathaniel Higginson on the Fort the printed accounts of such disasters were dis‐ St. George council who brought his training in cussed and the terms of company rule debated. classical languages and history to bear on argu‐ Interlopers, constant thorns in the side of the ments for company rule. Stern shows that the late company, consequently took to print to try and seventeenth-century East India Company even shift public opinion to denounce the East India drew on ideas of free trade as a key to its success Company monopoly. against rivals in the East, notably Siam. This early In recent years, historians of the British Em‐ modern notion of free trade was very different pire have debated the degree to which events, from the more familiar late eighteenth-century practices, and identities of "metropolitan" Britain version in that these early modern ideas were were shaped by the colonial encounter and colo‐ compatible with company rule. In deploying its nial rule. Stern's study speaks to this question on free trade strategy, the company guarded its right the important level of state formation, portraying as exclusive English sovereign in the East but it as a process entwined with the growth of com‐ strove for low taxes and insisted on the freedom mercial capitalism dependent on overseas trade. of movement for traders throughout its Asian The reverse is also true; events in Britain also sphere. The motive was political and social as shaped the company-state abroad, especially dur‐ much as economic. Trade followed rule.