Entry

Company sovereignty as anti-model

The company is the boundary case: commercial power acquiring governing power without the consent architecture this doctrine requires.

Author: British East India Company
Year: 1773
Track: anti-models
Citation: British East India Company record before and after the Regulating Act of 1773.

East India House, Leadenhall Street, London, watercolour by Thomas Malton the Younger, c. 1800 — Thomas Malton the Younger, c. 1800, Yale Center for British Art, public domain

The company is the boundary case: commercial power acquiring governing power without the consent architecture this doctrine requires. Its place in the canon is not decorative. It marks a recurring problem for American economic statecraft: how law, capital, operators, and legitimacy combine when a nation tries to build strategic economic terrain.