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The Corporation That Changed the World

How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational

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The Corporation That Changed the World

By: Nick Robins
Narrated by: Simon Barber
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About this listen

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

The Corporation That Changed the World is the first book to reveal the Company's enduring legacy as a corporation. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance, and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall. For decades, the Company was simply too big to fail, and stock market bubbles, famines, drug-running, and even duels between rival executives are to be found in this new account.

For Robins, the Company's story provides vital lessons on both the role of corporations in world history and the steps required to make global business accountable today.

©2012 Nick Robins (P)2017 Nick Robins Asia Economic History Economics Europe Great Britain India South Asia England Capitalism China Business Socialism Taxation

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All stars
Most relevant
Outstanding documentation of the East India Company and its legacy and social and political effects with a fantastic narrator. I'd fully recommend this for anyone, expert or not.

Outstanding

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An sharply written, beautifully read tale of greed, pride, and violence that has transformed the history of the world.

A gripping and powerful tale

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fair and unbiased history of the world's first mega corp and how it affected east west relations

enlightening

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Focus of this good book is on the corporate affairs of the EIC, very much a London basis. It covers this very well though matters such as stock price and dividends and board structure seemed to be covered incessantly rather than once off and there was a lack of any local focus such as the life of a clerk in London and Calcutta or how weaving was organised or the journey from tea plantation to cup. The few anecdotes about India were repetitive - instances of hand mutilation to stop weaving capabilities, that their pay went down (never up) but gave no indication of normality rather than exceptional circs. So , good for what it covered - I did finish it - but felt it missed a lot it could have covered. Did not like the performance much, rather robotic akin to computer voice and with treatment of breaks, headings, but it was clearly read. I needed to speed it up a bit

focus on corporate

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Excellent narration.

Detailed, well researched and well presented. The author understands economic consequences. He presents actions and reactions, leaving the reader generally agreeing that they naturally flow as cause and effect. Although his comment that the 5% UK GDP increase due to abuse of monopoly in India caused the Industrial Revolution was a bit much.

This long and compelling book details the abuse of monopoly power and shows that the situation grew significantly worse once the East India Company’s trading function was replaced by a governing administrative function.

Following his detailed evidence which clearly shows:
Don’t grant monopolies
Don’t give privileged tariffs
Don’t use force to impose trade agreements,

The author perplexingly concludes the opposite in his final chapter. He wants more Govt, more interference in the market, more globalisation.

It is a tribute to this author that his authoritarian outlook was not obvious until the final chapter. The book is well worth reading.

Schizophrenic but well worth reading

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