An American Overseas Trading Company?

[Libertad]

My question is related to the thread I'm planning to continue working starting now, THE CLICHE CALLED AMERIWANK, which can be seen on my signature.

Is it plausible that an overseas American trading company could be formed (not necessarily an East India Company but just an "Overseas Trade Company") by New England merchants and whalers chartered by a Federalist central government (Hamilton, Arnold, Laurens administrations whatever) and also become quite a bit successful abroad?

I'm also planning to have the United States purchased the French Indian ports (one or two or even all of them) seized by Great Britain at the end of the American victory in the War of Second Coalition that also seized Spanish Florida and Louisiana for the country. The company can just be founded around 1800's as part of the rise of interest in having overseas coastal outposts in India all of a sudden.

I'm thinking of how the butterflies might make this company helpful in some expansion like accidentally gaining Natal in southern Africa as one of its small successes or even found Singapore rather than have the British do it.

I have to keep the US allied to Britain though.

Hmmm.

Please Tell Me Your Thoughts. Thank you.

 

[Color-Copycat]

Americans wouldn't stand for having a big corporation monopolize any import/export trade. The ability of the heavily subsidized British EIC to dump cheap goods onto the American market was, after all, one of the instigating factors of the Revolutionary War.

And the big maritime trading companies/families wouldn't have liked having all their business being corralled into one risky venture.

 

[Some Bloke]

If it does eventually get off the ground it would make a useful front for Fillibuster expeditions.

 

[Libertad]

Americans wouldn't stand for having a big corporation monopolize any import/export trade. The ability of the heavily subsidized British EIC to dump cheap goods onto the American market was, after all, one of the instigating factors of the Revolutionary War.

And the big maritime trading companies/families wouldn't have liked having all their business being corralled into one risky venture.

Ah. Yes. That's true. But I think I'm on the opinion that the federal government would just charter that overseas trading company and have for example, just a 5% share within it. Just like how the federal government owns just a 20% share in the First Bank of the United States. I'm not asking for it to be subsidized so it would gain a monopoly on the import/export trade.

Can you give me some evidence why those trading companies or families wouldn't have liked having all their business being corralled into one risky venture? Especially that the country would gain an Indian territory?

 

[Libertad]

If it does eventually get off the ground it would make a useful front for Fillibuster expeditions.

Hmmm. That's true though I've never really thought about filibuster expeditions really. Though in a way it could happen just like how the Liberian Tonic Company in Big Tex's Ameriwank covertly intervened in the Kongo Revolution.

I just want this trading company to have some decent success, not became a replacement or a rival to the BEIC right away all of a sudden.

 

[MAlexMatt]

Americans wouldn't stand for having a big corporation monopolize any import/export trade. The ability of the heavily subsidized British EIC to dump cheap goods onto the American market was, after all, one of the instigating factors of the Revolutionary War.

And the big maritime trading companies/families wouldn't have liked having all their business being corralled into one risky venture.

The Federalists were able to ape a lot of the things that had initially pissed many of them off about the British IOTL. It seems, for the nationalist faction at least, their issue was with the British doing it to them, not with it being done at all.

It will probably prompt a strong Republican reaction, but there's nothing completely stopping it from happening.

 

[Maniakes]

US independence very nearly coincided with a significant economic transition related to the run-up to the industrial revolution. In the 17th and 18th centuries, corporations were practically extensions of the government, chartered to accomplish a particular public purpose, delegated limited state powers, and generally given government-backed monopolies in their intended field of operation: much more like Fannie Mae or your local electric company than like a modern business corporation. It was right around the 1790s that commercial culture and financial markets (in both the US and Britain) became mature enough that people began looking at corporations as a form of legal organization for a private business that would be unwieldy as an ordinary partnership or sole proprietorship. A distinction quickly emerged between "public corporations" and "private corporations", and the former gradually fell into disfavor except for big infrastructure projects built with a mix of private and government financing (until the Progressive era, when the model was revisited as a means of reigning in the perceived excesses and abuses of the "robber barons").

The Federalists were generally in favor of the old Public Corporation model, and could plausible have pushed for a big EIC-style trading company the way they pushed for the Bank of the United States, but they'd have a fairly short time window to make it happen and a limited amount of political capital with which to push it and the rest of their policy agenda, and the Democratic-Republicans would fight them every step of the way.

 

[MAlexMatt]

US independence very nearly coincided with a significant economic transition related to the run-up to the industrial revolution. In the 17th and 18th centuries, corporations were practically extensions of the government, chartered to accomplish a particular public purpose, delegated limited state powers, and generally given government-backed monopolies in their intended field of operation: much more like Fannie Mae or your local electric company than like a modern business corporation. It was right around the 1790s that commercial culture and financial markets (in both the US and Britain) became mature enough that people began looking at corporations as a form of legal organization for a private business that would be unwieldy as an ordinary partnership or sole proprietorship. A distinction quickly emerged between "public corporations" and "private corporations", and the former gradually fell into disfavor except for big infrastructure projects built with a mix of private and government financing (until the Progressive era, when the model was revisited as a means of reigning in the perceived excesses and abuses of the "robber barons").

This is actually pre-mature. This transition took place from the 1830's or so onward in the US. Prior to that, chartered corporations were still monopolistic, public-private partnerships. The first general incorporation law was passed in one of the New England states (cannot remember which, probably MA but maybe CT) in the late 1810's, IIRC.

 

[Maniakes]

This is actually pre-mature. This transition took place from the 1830's or so onward in the US. Prior to that, chartered corporations were still monopolistic, public-private partnerships. The first general incorporation law was passed in one of the New England states (cannot remember which, probably MA but maybe CT) in the late 1810's, IIRC.

My understanding is that the general incorporation laws actually lagged the practical transition by quite a bit, with many states gradually becoming more and more open-handed in granting corporate charters to ordinary private businesses even though the laws were still written with monopolistic public/private partnerships in mind. The general incorporation laws came from people noticing the trend, deciding it was a good thing, and pushing to formalize the practice.

I'm a little fuzzy on the exact dates, but I'm pretty sure the process was already well on its way by the first decade of the 19th century, as the book I learned about the transition from (Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty) spans the time period from 1789 (ratification of the Constitution) through 1815 (end of the War of 1812).

 

[Libertad]

Hmmm. GreatScottMarty's TL made Jefferson and Madison be discredited (which made them resign from politics) after the Planter Wars (an early Civil War) due to their secret intervening in the Treason Trials, making the Federalists to be on their way to some political dominance like what OTL's Republicans had done in the late 19th century. Burr and Monroe replaced them but with my TL's Alexander Hamilton (with lesser ideological excesses thanks to the factors of an American Quebec and John Laurens still alive after the ARW), John Jay, a Patriot Benedict Arnold and Guy Carleton and an alive John Laurens reinforcing the Federalist side plus the young John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, Winfield Scott and Andrew Jackson being all Federalists and also having a Federalist North and West around (Republicans being dominant in only three states; The Carolinas and Georgia while Alabama and Mississippi is an Indian territory, The Yazoo Territory); a Federalist agenda of establishing an overseas trading company can push through quite a bit easily isn't it?

Besides, what's the use of being so anti-British if you're going to war against the French and Spaniards?

So yes, This is an early Federalist America I'm planning. Without it, it's hard to make America expand outside the North American mainland.

 

[Libertad]

Will the establishment of this trading company makes this company monopolize the import-export trade of the country? I mean yes, this company would look like a public corporation but their share in the company is pretty much low (planning to make it just 5-10%) so despite that it would still create a monopoly? Really?

Probably. Given that having the federal government in that company would be like favoring this company over other merchants right?

Hmmm....

 

[metastasis_d]

I can't imagine an American Overseas Trading Company being ethical, but then again neither was virtually anything back in those days.

 

[Libertad]

I can't imagine an American Overseas Trading Company being ethical, but then again neither was virtually anything back in those days.

Ethical? Care to explain? In our modern contemporary standards, These trading companies are of course unethical in many things that they did like grabbing lands and selling slaves and everything else, but this is early 1800's and there's virtually no modern American business corporation model existing back then, and I can't make an argument in favor of the latter corporation model also. So far, the BEIC would look like an "enlightened economic institution" for those Federalists.

 

[Libertad]

No more ideas anybody?