BOOK: Harwell I. WELLS and James E. BEASLEY, eds., Research Handbook on the History of Corporate and Company Law [Research Handbooks in Corporate Law and Governance Series] (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018). ISBN 978 1 78471 765 0, $261.00

(Source: Edward Elgar Publishing)

Edward Elgar Publishing has recently published a research handbook on the history of Corporate and Company law

INFORMATION

Today, the corporation plays a dominant role in economics, politics, and societies across the globe. Understanding the corporation means understanding its legal framework but until recently, the origins and evolution of corporate law have received relatively little attention. This Handbook sheds new light on the historical development of both the corporation and business organization law.

This extensive collection brings together contributions from an array of international academics to provide the first wide-ranging history of the laws of corporations and business organizations from ancient to modern times. The contributors offer a global exploration of the development of corporation and company law, moving beyond the United States and Western Europe to present studies in Mexico, India and China, as well as addressing the trajectory of scholarly debate. Not only do the contributions examine the growth of the law of public corporation, they also address the development of laws governing other business forms.

This Handbook will prove an invaluable resource for corporation law and business scholars, as well as business and legal historians and economists.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents:

Introduction
Harwell Wells

Part I Taking Shape
1. Islamic Law and Economic Development
Jared Rubin

2. Business Organizations in India Prior to the British East India Company
Vikramaditya Khanna

3. Business Organization and Organizational Innovation in Late Medieval Italy
Yadira González de Lara

4. Trading with Strangers: The Corporate Form in the Move from Municipal Governance to Overseas Trade
Ron Harris

Part II Modern Europe
5. The Development of English Company Law before 1900
John D. Turner

6. Shareholder Primacy, Labour, and the Historic Ambivalence of UK Company Law
Marc T. Moore

7. German Company Law 1794-1897
Timothy W. Guinnane

8. German Corporate Law in the 20th Century
Thilo Kuntz

9. Change for Continuity: The Making of the Société Anonyme in nineteenth Century France
Jean Rochat

10. Classes of Shares and Voting Rights in the History of Italian Corporate Law
Giulio Sandrelli and Marco Ventoruzzo

11. A History of the Corporation in Spain in the Twentieth Century: Towards Europe
Susana Martínez-Rodríguez

12. EU Company Law Harmonization Between Convergence and Varieties of Capitalism
Martin Gelter

Part III Asia
13. Corporation Law in Late Imperial China
Teemu Ruskola

14. The Stakeholder Approach to Corporate Law: A Historical Perspective from India
Umakanth Varottil

15. Japanese Corporate Law and Corporate Governance in Historical Perspective
Bruce Aronson

Part IV North America
16. The Evolution of Mexican Mercantile and Corporate Laws
Aurora Gomez-Galvarriato and Gustavo A. Del Angel

17. A History of Canadian Corporate Law: A Divergent Path from the American Model?
Fenner L. Stewart

18. For- and Non-profit Special Corporations in America, 1608-1860
Robert E. Wright

19. Legitimating Power: A Brief History of Modern U.S. Corporate Law
Dalia T. Mitchell

20. Adolf Berle, E. Merrick Dodd and the New American Corporatism of 1932
William W. Bratton and Michael L. Wachter

21. Corporate Law and the History of Corporate Social Responsibility
Lyman Johnson

22. Evolutionary Models of Corporate Law
Amitai Aviram

Index

More information on the publisher’s website