Previous
Coin Debasing
A company monopoly is a trade system in which the government grants a single company exclusive rights over a certain branch of commerce. They were common in the colonial trade, which was often so unprofitable that only a monopoly like the British East India Company or Royal African Company could survive in it. Smith argues that company monopolies encourage corruption, hurt the national economy, and are always undesirable.
Company Monopoly Quotes in The Wealth of Nations
The The Wealth of Nations quotes below are all either spoken by Company Monopoly or refer to Company Monopoly. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 5, Chapter 1
Quotes
Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of small fortune, is willing to purchase a thousand pounds share in India stock, merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the court of proprietors. It gives him a share, though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of India. [...] About the prosperity of the great empire, in the government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are, and necessarily must be.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Wealth of Nations LitChart as a printable PDF.
Company Monopoly Term Timeline in The Wealth of Nations
The timeline below shows where the term Company Monopoly appears in The Wealth of Nations. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 4, Chapter 7
...kind of monopoly, exclusive trade, causes capital to flood into commerce. The second kind, the company-based monopoly , affects rich and poor European countries differently, but it is always undesirable. Poor countries,...
(full context)
Company monopolies are often justified on the grounds that only companies have enough capital to support the...
(full context)
...corrupt, although the organization’s structure is more at fault than its officers’ character. In general, company monopolies “are nuisances in every respect” and should always be avoided.
(full context)
Book 5, Chapter 1
...them useless, like the Hamburgh, Russia, and Eastland Companies. The Turkey Company imposes a repressive company monopoly on Britain’s trade with Turkey, which discourages people from joining it. These regulated companies have...
(full context)
...lose money—until it amassed an army and started conquering territory in India, giving it a company monopoly . It keeps demanding higher dividends and financial relief from the government. It is poorly...
(full context)
