
The Corporation That Changed the World
How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational
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Narrated by:
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Simon Barber
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By:
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Nick Robins
About this listen
The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.
The Corporation That Changed the World is the first book to reveal the Company's enduring legacy as a corporation. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance, and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall. For decades, the Company was simply too big to fail, and stock market bubbles, famines, drug-running, and even duels between rival executives are to be found in this new account.
For Robins, the Company's story provides vital lessons on both the role of corporations in world history and the steps required to make global business accountable today.
©2012 Nick Robins (P)2017 Nick RobinsListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story
In the 18th century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannons, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalized racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" was designed in Britain's interests alone.
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An entertaining and provocative history
- By James Moseley on 01-07-20
By: Shashi Tharoor
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Empire, Incorporated
- The Corporations That Built British Colonialism
- By: Philip J. Stern
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.
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Dry, boring, uninteresting
- By Vivek Oberoi on 10-23-24
By: Philip J. Stern
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Pattern Breakers
- Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future
- By: Mike Maples Jr, Peter Ziebelman
- Narrated by: Mike Maples Jr, Peter Ziebelman
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.” In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right. Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success.
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I’ve read 100s of books, this is top 5 all time
- By Calisurf on 12-21-24
By: Mike Maples Jr, and others
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The Power Broker
- Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
- By: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 66 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
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AMAZING read
- By jeff on 09-15-11
By: Robert A. Caro
The last chapters and epilogue tie the story of the EIC directly to the problems of today, with lack of sufficient regulation leading to unbridled power being concentrated in the hands of a few very large corporations.
The narrative delivery is very British! It’s a fine performance of the text, marred only by poor pronunciation of Chinese place names, which bugged me.
Overall I highly recommend this to students of Indian and British history, historians of business, and those in a position to influence government policy around corporations.
Insightful and incisive
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a great review
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i drink liberal tears
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WOW
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Awful
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Seems a bit unbalanced and not fully informed
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I would have preferred if the author had delivered coherent narrative up front, perhaps adding a conclusion that connected the company with modern Indian politics, contemporary British misperceptions of the company or whatever other contemporary social issues the author felt were important.
Alternatively, the author could have saved me a credit and just titled it: "Why I hate the East India Company and why you should, too!"
Not what I expect from a history book
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an axe to grind
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