Royal charters, royal power, and the business of empire
Royal charters, royal power, and the business of empire
A key feature of the Bubble Act is the use of royal charters. They were central to the rights of joint-stock companies such as the South Sea Company and the Bank of England. However, the charters themselves have received little attention from scholars. They have been overlooked in favour of discussions of the evolution of the corporate form. The process of issuing royal charters is opaque, perhaps deliberately so. In a political system without a written constitution, royal power is promoted as being merely symbolic and the monarch as a politically neutral figure. On closer inspection, royal charters were used to privilege certain companies and organisations which supported royal power. This is particularly the case with the companies set up to extract resources from colonised land. They reached their heyday after the Bubble Act was repealed, demonstrating that charters were not merely part of an older system which had been superceded by new corporate forms. The chartered companies acted on behalf of the state, and even instead of the state in some instances. Royal charters continue to be used into the present day, notably to bolster (and to manage) organisations which support the establishment. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is only one prominent example.
Paul, Helen
d925e4be-28d4-42f5-824d-aec37750e062
1 July 2023
Paul, Helen
d925e4be-28d4-42f5-824d-aec37750e062
Paul, Helen
(2023)
Royal charters, royal power, and the business of empire.
In,
Paul, Helen, Coffman, D'Maris and Di Liberto, Nick
(eds.)
The Bubble Act: New Perspectives from Passage to Repeal and Beyond.
(Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance)
London.
Palgrave Macmillan.
(doi:10.1007/978-3-031-31894-8_9).
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Book Section
Abstract
A key feature of the Bubble Act is the use of royal charters. They were central to the rights of joint-stock companies such as the South Sea Company and the Bank of England. However, the charters themselves have received little attention from scholars. They have been overlooked in favour of discussions of the evolution of the corporate form. The process of issuing royal charters is opaque, perhaps deliberately so. In a political system without a written constitution, royal power is promoted as being merely symbolic and the monarch as a politically neutral figure. On closer inspection, royal charters were used to privilege certain companies and organisations which supported royal power. This is particularly the case with the companies set up to extract resources from colonised land. They reached their heyday after the Bubble Act was repealed, demonstrating that charters were not merely part of an older system which had been superceded by new corporate forms. The chartered companies acted on behalf of the state, and even instead of the state in some instances. Royal charters continue to be used into the present day, notably to bolster (and to manage) organisations which support the establishment. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is only one prominent example.
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Submitted date: 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 July 2023
Published date: 1 July 2023
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 484037
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/484037
PURE UUID: e7c26789-f6c9-4c01-a760-7a5c7f098d76
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Date deposited: 09 Nov 2023 17:40
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:08
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Contributors
Editor:
Helen Paul
Editor:
D'Maris Coffman
Editor:
Nick Di Liberto
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