Edmond Smith

2026 London

Abstract: In early seventeenth-century Britain, corporate power was pervasive. Corporations governed cities, regulated industries, trained workers, and dominated overseas trade. Yet by the early eighteenth century this system had largely come unstuck. Most corporate bodies had lost their monopolies and exclusive privileges, or had them significantly undermined, opening participation to wider groups of stakeholders. Despite this formal decline, the influence of corporate institutions endured through the diffusion of shared business norms and practices. These informal institutions – rooted in corporate traditions of communal governance – continued to shape co-creation, innovation, and investment across sectors, laying foundations for Britain’s “Industrial Revolution”. Building on the New Institutionalism in the social sciences, this paper challenges economic history narratives that portray early modern Britain’s institutional landscape as cohesive and linear. Instead, it argues that the erosion of formal corporate structures fostered a flexible environment of informal linkages and co-creation. These connections were as significant as state-led initiatives in enabling the emergence of the “first modern economy.” The paper contributes to debates on business organisation and institutional development in three ways. First, it bridges the divide between studies of overseas trading corporations and domestic corporate enterprise. Second, it highlights the informal evolution of guild and corporate functions within the early modern economy. Third, it demonstrates how communal and corporate practices provided a foundation for later state and political institutions.