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Tyranny Inc?
Mar. 5th, 2008 04:50 pmI'm reading the newer book by the "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" guy, at the same time that I continue with my avid reading of 1600s era European history books. And a new idea is tantalizing me. Wouldn't it be fun to write a book that linked the earliest European corporations (the East India companies of the English, Portuguese, Dutch, etc....) and the earliest European banking concerns (especially the ones like the German I think banks that basically backed Columbus's expeditions) down through the couple intervening centuries and explored how they linked up, either thematically or financially or in terms of human genealogy, with forces involved in globalization today, like big companies with overseas contracts, and membership in things like the IMF. Because the pattern-making, suspicious side of my brain suspects that if you had the time and sat down with lists of the board and shareholder membership of the top, oh, 10% of most successful companies now, and similar for banks, you'd find that there was a lot of linkage going all the way back to the 1400s-1600s. Not in those standout "robber baron" type people like Carnegie, Rockefeller etc., but in the next tier down from there.
And there are astonishingly few "overview" type history books that provide any kind of comprehensive look at corporate power from any era. There aren't any critical, popular written books for instance on the East India companies that I've been able to find. There are books from the end of the age of empire, written in the first half of this century, that talk about the glowing legacy of these folks from a White Man's Burden perspective. And there are academic books published by University Presses with titles like "The Dutch East India Company, 1400-1600" or what have you, but nothing in between. There are books like "King Leopold's Ghost" that focus on one particular corporate outrage, and I think there are books on the history of De Beers (are there? are there any popular treatments?). I'm not interested in reading like, an outright marxist philosophical treatment or whatever - what I'd like to see is a straight narrative history of the type commonly written about queens and kings and nations, except about corporations and banks. I think it would be *FASCINATING*.
The thing of course, I suppose, is that much of the primary source material is private, and held in private hands, and you only get permission to access it if you promise a sympathetic treatment maybe?
I was reading a volume on the history of the founding of the Bank of England the other day, which is part of what made me think of it, and that book had certainly depended on private cooperation on the bank that archived their materials.
And there are astonishingly few "overview" type history books that provide any kind of comprehensive look at corporate power from any era. There aren't any critical, popular written books for instance on the East India companies that I've been able to find. There are books from the end of the age of empire, written in the first half of this century, that talk about the glowing legacy of these folks from a White Man's Burden perspective. And there are academic books published by University Presses with titles like "The Dutch East India Company, 1400-1600" or what have you, but nothing in between. There are books like "King Leopold's Ghost" that focus on one particular corporate outrage, and I think there are books on the history of De Beers (are there? are there any popular treatments?). I'm not interested in reading like, an outright marxist philosophical treatment or whatever - what I'd like to see is a straight narrative history of the type commonly written about queens and kings and nations, except about corporations and banks. I think it would be *FASCINATING*.
The thing of course, I suppose, is that much of the primary source material is private, and held in private hands, and you only get permission to access it if you promise a sympathetic treatment maybe?
I was reading a volume on the history of the founding of the Bank of England the other day, which is part of what made me think of it, and that book had certainly depended on private cooperation on the bank that archived their materials.
