What was Business like in the Elizabethan Era?
Corporations, in their modern form, were born in Elizabethan England. People would buy stock in a company, take their proportional share of its profits, and exercise proportional control by electing directors for the company. The Crown had to create all corporations and, of course, took a piece of the action in exchange for granting that privilege. The oldest corporation active in the English-speaking world was organized in Elizabeth’s last days, and not chartered until her successor, James Stuart, took the throne. That corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Company, survives today as a chain of department stores in Canada.
