Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T01:15:54.414Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Mid-Victorian Reform of Britain’s Company Laws and the Moral Economy of Fair Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2020

DAVID CHAN SMITH Open the ORCID record for DAVID CHAN SMITH [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the history of the reform of Britain’s company laws during the 1850s and makes three major arguments. First, the Law Amendment Society was the driving force for reform and organized the campaign for change. Second, the advancement of working-class interests and ideas of fairness were central to the conceptualization of these reforms and the course of their advocacy. Company law reform was broadly conceived to include the revision of the law of partnership, corporations, and cooperatives to create a level playing field in which smaller entrepreneurs could compete against established capitalists. Finally, central to this campaign was the institutional logic of “fair competition.” Socialists and liberals both used this logic, demonstrating how moral ideas can shape organizational change.

Keywords

cooperationpolitical economycompany lawlimited liabilityco-operativesmoral economygeneral incorporation
Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 1103 - 1139
Copyright
© The Authors 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Koji Yamamoto for suggesting this article in the first place; Michael Lobban and Amy Milne-Smith for kindly reading and commenting on earlier drafts; and Mark Billings, who provided a key insight in organizational theory. The essay was completed during a visiting fellowship at the Bodleian Library and Jesus College, University of Oxford, and conversations there with Luca Enriques and Paulina Kewes helped to clarify the arguments. The Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada, provided funding for this project (no. 435-2018-0689), and the Office of Research Services at Wilfrid Laurier University has been an invaluable source of support.

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Alborn, Timothy L. Conceiving Companies: Joint Stock Politics in Victorian England. London: Routledge, 1998.Google Scholar
Babbage, Charles. The Exposition of 1851. London: Cass, 1968.Google Scholar
Cary, Henry. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnership: With Precedents of Copartnership Deeds. London: J. & W.T. Clarke, 1827.Google Scholar
Christensen, Torben. Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 1848–54. Leiden: Brill, 1962.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Christian. Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of the Role of Business in American Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collyer, John. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnership. London: S. Sweet, 1840.Google Scholar
Cooke, Colin Arthur. Corporation, Trust and Company: An Essay in Legal History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1950.Google Scholar
Cottrell, P. L. Industrial Finance, 1830–1914: The Finance and Organization of English Manufacturing Industry. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DuBois, Armand. The English Business Company After the Bubble Act, 1720–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Fane, Cecil. Limited Liability: Its Necessity as a Means of Promoting Enterprise. London: A. and G.A. Spottiswoode, 1845.Google Scholar
Field, E. W. Recent and Future Law Reforms. London: printed by Charles Reynell, 1843.Google Scholar
Finn, Margot. The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Goldman, Lawrence. Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association, 1857–1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gow, Niel. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnerships. London: Charles Hunter, 1825.Google Scholar
Halliday, Paul D. Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England’s Towns, 1650–1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Ron. Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720–1844. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Hollis, Patricia. Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England. London: Edward Arnold, 1974.Google Scholar
Hunt, B. C. The Development of the Business Corporation in England, 1800–1867. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. Making the Market: Victorian Origins of Corporate Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Konings, Martijn. The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Lindsay, W. S., and Cobden, Richard. Remarks on the Law of Partnership and Limited Liability. London: Effingham Wilson, 1856.Google Scholar
Ludlow, John. The Master Engineers and Their Workmen: Three Lectures. London: J.J. Bezer, 1852.Google Scholar
Mandler, Peter. Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830–1852. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurice, F. D. Reasons for Co-Operation. London: J.W. Parker, 1851.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McQueen, Rob. A Social History of Company Law: Great Britain and the Australian Colonies 1854–1920. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.Google Scholar
Murray, A. D. John Ludlow: The Autobiography of a Christian Socialist. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neale, Edward Vansittart. May I Not Do What I Will with My Own? Considerations on the Present Contest Between the Operative Engineers and Their Employers. London: J.J. Bezer, 1852.Google Scholar
Neale, Edward Vansittart. Labour and Capital: a lecture delivered by request of the Society for Promoting Working-Men’s Associations. London: E. Lumley, 1852.Google Scholar
Norman, Edward R. The Victorian Christian Socialists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C., Wallis, John Joseph, and Weingast, Barry R., Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oman, Nathan B. The Dignity of Commerce: Markets and the Moral Foundations of Contract Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Parker, Henry. Of Free Trade. London, 1648.Google Scholar
Parry, J. P. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Potter, Edmund. The Law of Partnership. A Reply to the Speech of the Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie. London: J. Chapman, 1855.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. Genres of the Credit Economy Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raven, Charles E. Christian Socialism, 1848–1854. New York: Routledge, 1968.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, G. R. Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Stedman, Gareth. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Taylor, James. Boardroom Scandal: The Criminalization of Company Fraud in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, James. Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture, 1800–1870. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2014.Google Scholar
Thornton, Patricia H., Ocasio, William, and Lounsbury, Michael. The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. London: John W. Parker, 1858.Google Scholar
Amsler, Christine E., Bartlett, Robin L., and Bolton, Craig J.. “Thoughts of Some British Economists on Early Limited Liability and Corporate Legislation.” History of Political Economy 13, no. 4 (1981): 774–793.Google Scholar
Bamfield, Joshua. “Consumer-owned Community Flour and Bread Societies in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Business History 40, no. 4 (1998): 16–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryer, R. A. “The Mercantile Laws Commission of 1854 and the Political Economy of Limited Liability.” Economic History Review 50, no. 1 (1997): 37–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Henry N. “General Incorporation in Nineteenth Century England: Interaction of Common Law and Legislative Processes.” International Review of Law and Economics 6, no. 2 (1986): 169–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Djelic, Marie-Laure. “When Limited Liability Was (Still) an Issue: Mobilization and Politics of Signification in 19th-Century England.” Organization Studies 34, nos. 5–6 (2013): 595–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finn, Margot. “Working-Class Women and the Contest for Consumer Control in Victorian County Courts.” Past & Present, no. 161 (1998): 116–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedland, Roger, and Alford, Robert. “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Powell, Walter and DiMaggio, Paul, 232–263. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Getzler, Joshua, and Macnair, Mike. “The Firm as an Entity Before the Companies Acts.” In Adventures of the Law: Proceedings of the Sixteenth British Legal History Conference, edited by Osborough, W. N., Brand, Paul, and Costello, Kevin, 267–288. Dublin: Four Courts, 2003.Google Scholar
Greg, W. R. “Investments for the Working Classes.” Edinburgh Review 95 (April 1852): 405–53.Google Scholar
Goldman, Lawrence. “Social Reform and the Pressure of ‘Progress’ on Parliament, 1660–1914.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 72–88.Google Scholar
Guinnane, Timothy, Harris, Ron, Lamoreaux, Naomi, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent. “Putting the Corporation in Its Place.” Enterprise & Society 8, no. 3 (2007), 687–729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. “Moral Disciplines.” In Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, edited by Mandler, Peter, 224–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoppit, Julian. “Petitions, Economic Legislation and Interest Groups in Britain, 1660–1800.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 52–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, C. “The Joint-Stock Company in England, 1830–1844.” Journal of Political Economy 43, no. 3 (1935): 331–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huzzey, Richard. “Contesting Interests: Rethinking Pressure, Parliament, Nation, and Empire.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireland, Paddy. “Rise of the Limited Liability Company.” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 12 (1984): 239–260.Google Scholar
Ireland, Paddy. “Company Law and the Myth of Shareholder Ownership.” Modern Law Review 62, no. 1 (1999): 32–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffreys, J. B. “Trends in Business Organization in Great Britain Since 1856.” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1938.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. “Class Law in Victorian England.” Past & Present, no. 141 (1993): 147–169.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul A. “Market Disciplines.” In Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, edited by Mandler, Peter, 203–223. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. “Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics.” Journal of Business 59, no. 4 (1986): S285–S300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market.” American Economic Review 76, no. 4 (1986): 728–741.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Thomas B., and Suddaby, Roy. “Institutions and Institutional Work.” In The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies, 2nd ed., edited by Clegg, Stewart, Hardy, Cynthia, Lawrence, Thomas B., and Nord, Walter, 215–254. London: Sage, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Corporate Identity and Limited Liability in France and England 1825–67,” Anglo-American Law Review 25, no. 4 (1996): 402–403.Google Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Henry Brougham and Law Reform.” English Historical Review 115, no. 464 (2000): 1184–1215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “‘Old Wine in New Bottles’: The Concept and Practice of Law Reform, c.1780–1830.” In Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780–1850, edited by Innes, Joanna and Burns, Arthur, 114–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Preparing for Fusion: Reforming the Nineteenth-Century Court of Chancery, Part II.” Law and History Review 22, no. 3 (2004): 565–599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Joint Stock Companies.” In The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Vol. 12, 1820–1914, Private Law, edited by Cornish, W. R., 613–673. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loftus, Donna. “Capital and Community: Limited Liability and Attempts to Democratize the Market in Mid-– England.” Victorian Studies 45, no. 1 (2002): 93–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltby, Josephine. “UK Joint Stock Companies Legislation 1844–1900: Accounting Publicity and ‘Mercantile Caution.’” Accounting History 3, no. 1 (1998): 9–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C. “A Framework for Analyzing the State in Economic History.” Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 3 (1979): 249–259.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C., Wallis, John Joseph, and Weingast, Barry R.. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Rix, M. S. “Company Law: 1844 and To-Day.” Economic Journal 55, nos. 218–219 (1945): 242-260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saville, John. “Sleeping Partnership and Limited Liability, 1850–1856.” Economic History Review 8, no. 3 (1956): 418–433.Google Scholar
Shannon, H. A. “The Coming of General Limited Liability.” In Essays in Economic History, edited by Carus-Wilson, E. M., 1:358–405. London: E. Arnold, 1954.Google Scholar
Shannon, H. A. “The Limited Companies of 1866–83.” In Essays in Economic History, edited by Carus-Wilson, E.M., 1:380–405. London, 1954.Google Scholar
Smith, Roland. “An Oldham Limited Liability Company 1875–1896.” Business History 4, no. 1 (1961): 34–53.Google Scholar
Suddaby, Roy, Foster, William, and Mills, Albert. “Historical Institutionalism.” In Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods, edited by Bucheli, Marcelo and Wadhwani, R. Daniel, 100–123. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present, no. 50 (1971): 76–136.Google Scholar
Thornton, Patricia H., and Ocasio, William. “Institutional Logics and the Historical Contingency of Power in Organizations: Executive Succession in the Higher Education Publishing Industry, 1958–1990.” American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 3 (1999): 801–843.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todd, Geoffrey. “Some Aspects of Joint Stock Companies, 1844–1900.” Economic History Review 4, no. 1 (1932): 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walton, John K. “Revisiting the Rochdale Pioneers.” Labour History Review 80, no. 3 (2015): 215–248.Google Scholar
Ker, Bellenden. Report on the Law of Partnership. Parliamentary Papers. London, 1837.Google Scholar
Report from the Select Committee on the Law of Partnerships. London: HMSO, 1851.Google Scholar
Report of the Mercantile Laws Commission of 1854 . London: HMSO, 1854.Google Scholar
Report of the Select Committee on Investments for the Savings of the Middle and Working Classes. London: HMSO, 1850Google Scholar
Report of the Special Committee on the Joint-Stock Companies Bill [of the] Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law . London: HMSO, 1856.Google Scholar
The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . London: HMSO, 1844.Google Scholar
United Kingdom, Hansard Parliamentary Debates , 3rd series. [Hansard HC Deb, House of Commons; Hansard HL Deb, House of Lords]Google Scholar
The Christian Socialist Google Scholar
The Economist Google Scholar
The Edinburgh Review Google Scholar
The Journal of Association, Conducted by Several of the Promoters of the London Working Men’s Associations Google Scholar
Law Amendment Journal Google Scholar
Law Magazine Google Scholar
Law Review, and Quarterly Journal of British and Foreign Jurisprudence Google Scholar
Legal Observer Google Scholar
Manchester Times Google Scholar
The Morning Chronicle Google Scholar
The Times of London Google Scholar
Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science Google Scholar
The Westminster Review Google Scholar
The British Library [BL]Google Scholar
Cambridge University LibraryGoogle Scholar
The Library of BirminghamGoogle Scholar
The National Archives, Kew [TNA]Google Scholar
The National Co-operative Archive, ManchesterGoogle Scholar
The Parliamentary ArchivesGoogle Scholar
The University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library [UB]Google Scholar
University College London, Special Collections [UCL]Google Scholar
Cox v. Hickman (1860), 8 H.L.C. 268.Google Scholar
Davies v. Hawkins (1815), 3 M. & S. 488, 105 ER 693.Google Scholar
Brown v. Holt (1812), 3 Taunt. 587, 128 ER 460.Google Scholar
Carlen v. Drury (1812), 1 V. & B. 154, 35 ER 61.Google Scholar
Halket v. Merchant Traders’ Ship etc. Co. (1849), 13 Q. B. 960, 116 ER 1530.Google Scholar
Hallett v. Dowdall (1852), 18 Q. B. 2, 118 ER 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josephs v. Pebrer (1825), 3 B. & C. 63, 107 ER 870.Google Scholar
Pratt v. Hutchinson (1812), 15 East, 511, 104 ER 936.Google Scholar
R. v. Dodd (1808), 9 East 516, 103 ER 670.Google Scholar
R. v. Webb (1811), 14 East 421, 104 ER 664.Google Scholar
van Sandau v. Moore (1825), 2 Sim. & St. 509, 57 ER 440.Google Scholar
Waugh v. Carver (1793), 2 H. BL. 246, 126 ER 525.Google Scholar
Alborn, Timothy L. Conceiving Companies: Joint Stock Politics in Victorian England. London: Routledge, 1998.Google Scholar
Babbage, Charles. The Exposition of 1851. London: Cass, 1968.Google Scholar
Cary, Henry. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnership: With Precedents of Copartnership Deeds. London: J. & W.T. Clarke, 1827.Google Scholar
Christensen, Torben. Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 1848–54. Leiden: Brill, 1962.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Christian. Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of the Role of Business in American Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collyer, John. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnership. London: S. Sweet, 1840.Google Scholar
Cooke, Colin Arthur. Corporation, Trust and Company: An Essay in Legal History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1950.Google Scholar
Cottrell, P. L. Industrial Finance, 1830–1914: The Finance and Organization of English Manufacturing Industry. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DuBois, Armand. The English Business Company After the Bubble Act, 1720–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Fane, Cecil. Limited Liability: Its Necessity as a Means of Promoting Enterprise. London: A. and G.A. Spottiswoode, 1845.Google Scholar
Field, E. W. Recent and Future Law Reforms. London: printed by Charles Reynell, 1843.Google Scholar
Finn, Margot. The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Goldman, Lawrence. Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association, 1857–1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gow, Niel. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnerships. London: Charles Hunter, 1825.Google Scholar
Halliday, Paul D. Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England’s Towns, 1650–1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Ron. Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720–1844. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Hollis, Patricia. Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England. London: Edward Arnold, 1974.Google Scholar
Hunt, B. C. The Development of the Business Corporation in England, 1800–1867. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. Making the Market: Victorian Origins of Corporate Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Konings, Martijn. The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Lindsay, W. S., and Cobden, Richard. Remarks on the Law of Partnership and Limited Liability. London: Effingham Wilson, 1856.Google Scholar
Ludlow, John. The Master Engineers and Their Workmen: Three Lectures. London: J.J. Bezer, 1852.Google Scholar
Mandler, Peter. Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830–1852. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurice, F. D. Reasons for Co-Operation. London: J.W. Parker, 1851.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McQueen, Rob. A Social History of Company Law: Great Britain and the Australian Colonies 1854–1920. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.Google Scholar
Murray, A. D. John Ludlow: The Autobiography of a Christian Socialist. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neale, Edward Vansittart. May I Not Do What I Will with My Own? Considerations on the Present Contest Between the Operative Engineers and Their Employers. London: J.J. Bezer, 1852.Google Scholar
Neale, Edward Vansittart. Labour and Capital: a lecture delivered by request of the Society for Promoting Working-Men’s Associations. London: E. Lumley, 1852.Google Scholar
Norman, Edward R. The Victorian Christian Socialists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C., Wallis, John Joseph, and Weingast, Barry R., Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oman, Nathan B. The Dignity of Commerce: Markets and the Moral Foundations of Contract Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Parker, Henry. Of Free Trade. London, 1648.Google Scholar
Parry, J. P. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Potter, Edmund. The Law of Partnership. A Reply to the Speech of the Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie. London: J. Chapman, 1855.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. Genres of the Credit Economy Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raven, Charles E. Christian Socialism, 1848–1854. New York: Routledge, 1968.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, G. R. Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Stedman, Gareth. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Taylor, James. Boardroom Scandal: The Criminalization of Company Fraud in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, James. Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture, 1800–1870. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2014.Google Scholar
Thornton, Patricia H., Ocasio, William, and Lounsbury, Michael. The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. London: John W. Parker, 1858.Google Scholar
Amsler, Christine E., Bartlett, Robin L., and Bolton, Craig J.. “Thoughts of Some British Economists on Early Limited Liability and Corporate Legislation.” History of Political Economy 13, no. 4 (1981): 774–793.Google Scholar
Bamfield, Joshua. “Consumer-owned Community Flour and Bread Societies in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Business History 40, no. 4 (1998): 16–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryer, R. A. “The Mercantile Laws Commission of 1854 and the Political Economy of Limited Liability.” Economic History Review 50, no. 1 (1997): 37–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Henry N. “General Incorporation in Nineteenth Century England: Interaction of Common Law and Legislative Processes.” International Review of Law and Economics 6, no. 2 (1986): 169–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Djelic, Marie-Laure. “When Limited Liability Was (Still) an Issue: Mobilization and Politics of Signification in 19th-Century England.” Organization Studies 34, nos. 5–6 (2013): 595–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finn, Margot. “Working-Class Women and the Contest for Consumer Control in Victorian County Courts.” Past & Present, no. 161 (1998): 116–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedland, Roger, and Alford, Robert. “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Powell, Walter and DiMaggio, Paul, 232–263. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Getzler, Joshua, and Macnair, Mike. “The Firm as an Entity Before the Companies Acts.” In Adventures of the Law: Proceedings of the Sixteenth British Legal History Conference, edited by Osborough, W. N., Brand, Paul, and Costello, Kevin, 267–288. Dublin: Four Courts, 2003.Google Scholar
Greg, W. R. “Investments for the Working Classes.” Edinburgh Review 95 (April 1852): 405–53.Google Scholar
Goldman, Lawrence. “Social Reform and the Pressure of ‘Progress’ on Parliament, 1660–1914.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 72–88.Google Scholar
Guinnane, Timothy, Harris, Ron, Lamoreaux, Naomi, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent. “Putting the Corporation in Its Place.” Enterprise & Society 8, no. 3 (2007), 687–729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. “Moral Disciplines.” In Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, edited by Mandler, Peter, 224–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoppit, Julian. “Petitions, Economic Legislation and Interest Groups in Britain, 1660–1800.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 52–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, C. “The Joint-Stock Company in England, 1830–1844.” Journal of Political Economy 43, no. 3 (1935): 331–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huzzey, Richard. “Contesting Interests: Rethinking Pressure, Parliament, Nation, and Empire.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireland, Paddy. “Rise of the Limited Liability Company.” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 12 (1984): 239–260.Google Scholar
Ireland, Paddy. “Company Law and the Myth of Shareholder Ownership.” Modern Law Review 62, no. 1 (1999): 32–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffreys, J. B. “Trends in Business Organization in Great Britain Since 1856.” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1938.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. “Class Law in Victorian England.” Past & Present, no. 141 (1993): 147–169.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul A. “Market Disciplines.” In Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, edited by Mandler, Peter, 203–223. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. “Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics.” Journal of Business 59, no. 4 (1986): S285–S300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market.” American Economic Review 76, no. 4 (1986): 728–741.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Thomas B., and Suddaby, Roy. “Institutions and Institutional Work.” In The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies, 2nd ed., edited by Clegg, Stewart, Hardy, Cynthia, Lawrence, Thomas B., and Nord, Walter, 215–254. London: Sage, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Corporate Identity and Limited Liability in France and England 1825–67,” Anglo-American Law Review 25, no. 4 (1996): 402–403.Google Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Henry Brougham and Law Reform.” English Historical Review 115, no. 464 (2000): 1184–1215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “‘Old Wine in New Bottles’: The Concept and Practice of Law Reform, c.1780–1830.” In Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780–1850, edited by Innes, Joanna and Burns, Arthur, 114–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Preparing for Fusion: Reforming the Nineteenth-Century Court of Chancery, Part II.” Law and History Review 22, no. 3 (2004): 565–599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Joint Stock Companies.” In The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Vol. 12, 1820–1914, Private Law, edited by Cornish, W. R., 613–673. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loftus, Donna. “Capital and Community: Limited Liability and Attempts to Democratize the Market in Mid-– England.” Victorian Studies 45, no. 1 (2002): 93–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltby, Josephine. “UK Joint Stock Companies Legislation 1844–1900: Accounting Publicity and ‘Mercantile Caution.’” Accounting History 3, no. 1 (1998): 9–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C. “A Framework for Analyzing the State in Economic History.” Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 3 (1979): 249–259.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C., Wallis, John Joseph, and Weingast, Barry R.. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Rix, M. S. “Company Law: 1844 and To-Day.” Economic Journal 55, nos. 218–219 (1945): 242-260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saville, John. “Sleeping Partnership and Limited Liability, 1850–1856.” Economic History Review 8, no. 3 (1956): 418–433.Google Scholar
Shannon, H. A. “The Coming of General Limited Liability.” In Essays in Economic History, edited by Carus-Wilson, E. M., 1:358–405. London: E. Arnold, 1954.Google Scholar
Shannon, H. A. “The Limited Companies of 1866–83.” In Essays in Economic History, edited by Carus-Wilson, E.M., 1:380–405. London, 1954.Google Scholar
Smith, Roland. “An Oldham Limited Liability Company 1875–1896.” Business History 4, no. 1 (1961): 34–53.Google Scholar
Suddaby, Roy, Foster, William, and Mills, Albert. “Historical Institutionalism.” In Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods, edited by Bucheli, Marcelo and Wadhwani, R. Daniel, 100–123. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present, no. 50 (1971): 76–136.Google Scholar
Thornton, Patricia H., and Ocasio, William. “Institutional Logics and the Historical Contingency of Power in Organizations: Executive Succession in the Higher Education Publishing Industry, 1958–1990.” American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 3 (1999): 801–843.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todd, Geoffrey. “Some Aspects of Joint Stock Companies, 1844–1900.” Economic History Review 4, no. 1 (1932): 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walton, John K. “Revisiting the Rochdale Pioneers.” Labour History Review 80, no. 3 (2015): 215–248.Google Scholar
Ker, Bellenden. Report on the Law of Partnership. Parliamentary Papers. London, 1837.Google Scholar
Report from the Select Committee on the Law of Partnerships. London: HMSO, 1851.Google Scholar
Report of the Mercantile Laws Commission of 1854 . London: HMSO, 1854.Google Scholar
Report of the Select Committee on Investments for the Savings of the Middle and Working Classes. London: HMSO, 1850Google Scholar
Report of the Special Committee on the Joint-Stock Companies Bill [of the] Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law . London: HMSO, 1856.Google Scholar
The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . London: HMSO, 1844.Google Scholar
United Kingdom, Hansard Parliamentary Debates , 3rd series. [Hansard HC Deb, House of Commons; Hansard HL Deb, House of Lords]Google Scholar
The Christian Socialist Google Scholar
The Economist Google Scholar
The Edinburgh Review Google Scholar
The Journal of Association, Conducted by Several of the Promoters of the London Working Men’s Associations Google Scholar
Law Amendment Journal Google Scholar
Law Magazine Google Scholar
Law Review, and Quarterly Journal of British and Foreign Jurisprudence Google Scholar
Legal Observer Google Scholar
Manchester Times Google Scholar
The Morning Chronicle Google Scholar
The Times of London Google Scholar
Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science Google Scholar
The Westminster Review Google Scholar
The British Library [BL]Google Scholar
Cambridge University LibraryGoogle Scholar
The Library of BirminghamGoogle Scholar
The National Archives, Kew [TNA]Google Scholar
The National Co-operative Archive, ManchesterGoogle Scholar
The Parliamentary ArchivesGoogle Scholar
The University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library [UB]Google Scholar
University College London, Special Collections [UCL]Google Scholar
Cox v. Hickman (1860), 8 H.L.C. 268.Google Scholar
Davies v. Hawkins (1815), 3 M. & S. 488, 105 ER 693.Google Scholar
Brown v. Holt (1812), 3 Taunt. 587, 128 ER 460.Google Scholar
Carlen v. Drury (1812), 1 V. & B. 154, 35 ER 61.Google Scholar
Halket v. Merchant Traders’ Ship etc. Co. (1849), 13 Q. B. 960, 116 ER 1530.Google Scholar
Hallett v. Dowdall (1852), 18 Q. B. 2, 118 ER 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josephs v. Pebrer (1825), 3 B. & C. 63, 107 ER 870.Google Scholar
Pratt v. Hutchinson (1812), 15 East, 511, 104 ER 936.Google Scholar
R. v. Dodd (1808), 9 East 516, 103 ER 670.Google Scholar
R. v. Webb (1811), 14 East 421, 104 ER 664.Google Scholar
van Sandau v. Moore (1825), 2 Sim. & St. 509, 57 ER 440.Google Scholar
Waugh v. Carver (1793), 2 H. BL. 246, 126 ER 525.Google Scholar