Origins of Corporations
An edition of Origins of Corporations (2015)
The Mills of Toulouse in the Middle Ages
By Germain Sicard,Matthew Landry,William N. Goetzmann
Publish Date
2015
Publisher
Yale University Press
Language
eng
Pages
520
Description:
"Germain Sicard proves that Europe's first corporations were fourteenth-century mill companies operating in Toulouse, rather than seventeenth-century English and Dutch trading companies as commonly believed. He shows that the corporate form derives from a unique ownership contract from Medieval Europe called pariage, and a culture of strong property rights and municipal self-governance. Based on archival research, Sicard's 1952 thesis has been translated into English with an introduction that places the work in the context of new institutional economics and legal theory. It is an important contribution to research on the history and legal origins of the corporation"--