Henry S. Turner

This project locates the development of the “corporation” within several distinct but intersecting histories: the history of political theory and political institutions; the history of ethics; the history of economic thought; and the history of science, with a particular emphasis on how technology becomes a means of organizing and justifying forms of collective life. It traces the corporation from late-medieval theories of civic identity and kingship to the rise of the chartered company and the colonial plantations of the New World.