Conceiving companies: joint-stock politics in Victorian England

308 Pages·2.547 MB·English

by  Alborn, Timothy L

CONCEIVING COMPANIES

Since the early twentieth century, the joint-stock company and the state have
stood together as exemplars of modern bureaucratic institutions. For at least
as long, that co-existence has been uncomfortable, as companies and states
have wound their way through an inconclusive cycle of proposals to regulate,
deregulate, or otherwise adjust the boundaries between “private” and
“public” spheres. Conceiving Companies offers a new perspective on the
rise of large-scale companies in Victorian England by locating their origins
in political and social practice. In the process, it challenges the clear division
between the state and the market that has long informed regulatory theory
and policy.
The study is divided into three sections, each on a different facet of “joint-
stock politics.” The first section surveys the East India Company and the
Bank of England, two expressly political institutions which needed to adjust
to new tendencies in the nineteenth century to view companies as more
properly part of the market. The second locates England’s early joint-stock
banks in the voluntarist and regionalist political culture of the 1830s, then
traces their departure from these origins through the end of the century. The
final section argues that Victorian railways, in shielding themselves from state
intervention, neglected their public relations with creditors, customers, and
workers, and suffered economically as a result.
Conceiving Companies offers a new perspective on an issue of great
significance, not only for historians, but for political scientists and
economists.
Timothy L.Alborn is Associate Professor of History and Social Studies at
Harvard University. He has published articles on economic language and
culture, and on the history of science, in journals including Victorian Studies,
Science in Context, and History of Political Economy.
ROUTLEDGE EXPLORATIONS IN
ECONOMIC HISTORY
1. ECONOMIC IDEAS AND GOVERNMENT POLICY
Contributions to contemporary economic history
Sir Alec Cairncross
2. THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR MARKETS
Modernity, culture and governance in Germany, Sweden, Britain and Japan
Bo Stråth
3. CURRENCY CONVERTIBILITY
The gold standard and beyond
Edited by Jorge Braga de Macedo, Barry Eichengreen and Jaime Reis
4. BRITAIN’S PLACE IN THE WORLD
Import controls 1946–1960
Alan S.Milward and George Brennan
5. FRANCE AND THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY
From Vichy to the Treaty of Rome
Frances M.B.Lynch
6. MONETARY STANDARDS AND EXCHANGE RATES
M.C.Marcuzzo, L.Officer and A.Rosselli
7. PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY IN DOMESDAY ENGLAND,
1086
John McDonald
8. FREE TRADE AND ITS RECEPTION 1815–1960
Freedom and trade, volume I
Edited by Andrew Marrison
9. CONCEIVING COMPANIES
Joint-stock politics in Victorian England
Timothy L.Alborn
CONCEIVING
COMPANIES
Joint-stock politics in Victorian England
Timothy L.Alborn
London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1998 Timothy L.Alborn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Alborn, Timothy L., 1964–
Conceiving companies: joint-stock politics in Victorian England/
Timothy L.Alborn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Corporation—England—History—19th century. 2. Stock
companies—England—History—19th century. 3. Industrial
policy—England—History—19th century. I. Title.
HD2845.Z8E543 1998
338.7’0942’09034–dc21 97–33482

ISBN 0-203-45092-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75916-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–18079–1 (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
List of abbreviations ix
1 Introduction: companies and states 1
Part I
Sovereign companies
2 Democratic despot: the East India Company, 1783–1858 21
Reform from within, 1783–1833 23
Between corruption and deception, 1833–58 35
Conclusion 51
3 Reluctant sovereign: the Bank of England, 1797–1875 53
Gold and democracy, 1797–1844 56
Repoliticizing credit, 1844–75 70
Unchartered territory: beyond the Bank of England 79
Part II
Joint-stock banks
4 “Representatives of the people”: the politics of joint-stock
banking, 1826–44 85
Institutional contexts of English joint-stock banking, 1760–1840 87
The rise of democratic banking, 1825–36 99
Banking legislation and administrative reform 108
5 Shifting gears: the rise of deposit banking, 1844–80 116
After democracy: banks, bills, and crisis, 1844–66 118
A second national debt: bank deposits and shareholder liability 130
v
CONTENTS
6 “Doing enormous things”: national banks, 1880–1914 141
The amalgamation movement 144
Deposits and democracy: the savings bank debate, 1890–1910 158
Conclusion: local power and the limits of joint-stock politics 165
Part III
Railways
7 Early railways and the machinery of joint-stock politics 173
The mechanization of joint-stock politics 173
An uneasy peace: railway shareholders and City finance 187
8 Railway republics and bureaucratic visions, 1860–75 201
Shareholder activism and railway finance 202
A state guarantee: the fad of nationalization 211
9 Railways against democracy, 1875–1914 225
The railway rates debate, 1873–1906 228
Keeping shareholders happy: security and overcapitalization 237
A fate worse than debt: the nationalization threat, 1890–1914 245
10 Conclusion: going public 257
Notes 261
Bibliography 268
Index 290
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project originated in the early 1990s, when I started to notice references
to representative government, “Old Corruption,” and Parliamentary politics
in the published advertisements of early Victorian joint-stock companies. I
was struck by the contrast between the ubiquity of such references (once
I started to look for them) and their relative absence in historical accounts
which trace the rise of British banks, railways, and insurance companies.
So I widened my search for examples of what I came to call “joint-stock
politics” to include shareholder meetings, commentary and correspondence
in local newpapers and trade journals, Parliamentary testimony, and early
economic treatises. What I found turned into Conceiving Companies.
To gain proper perspective on the evidence I was accumulating, it was
necessary to dig deeper into what British historians have had to say about
nineteenth-century political and economic developments. The political and
social history of the period taught me to expand my definition of what
counted as “political” at a time when “the state” in Britain self-consciously
ceded most of its functions to local government, voluntary societies, and
(as I will be arguing) joint-stock companies. Business and economic
historians, despite focusing much less than I do below on the “political”
identity of early corporate enterprise, reminded me at every step that things
like regional markets and managerial strategy were anything but irrelevant
to my story. As the project progressed, the challenge shifted from cataloging
nineteenth-century articulations of joint-stock politics to using this evidence
to work towards a new synthesis of existing scholarship on the Victorian
political economy. Notwithstanding Robert Merton’s well-founded suspicion
of those who claim to see farther when astride the shoulders of giants, my
ability to make sense of Victorian companies owes much to the valuable
contributions of a variety of historians in recent years. The work of Michael
Collins, Philip Cottrell, and Terry Gourvish in business history, and of Martin
Daunton, Boyd Hilton, and R.J.Morris in political and social history, has
been especially helpful.
A number of people and institutions have offered their unflagging support
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and inspiration as this book has come together. I wish to thank Peter Buck,
Brian Cooper, Barbara Rosenkrantz, and Frank Dobbin for reading the entire
manuscript and offering their timely and very helpful advice. Deborah
Cohen, Richard Grossman, Bill Kirby, Charles Maier, and Susan Pedersen
also kindly read and commented on early drafts; and Phil Mirowski was
a special inspiration in getting me headed in the direction of joint-stock
politics. Over the past few years I have also learned much, about companies
and other things, from my friendship and intellectual exchange with Simon
Schaffer, Anne and Jim Secord, Judy Vichniac, Mary Morgan, Ted Porter,
Margot Finn, Roger Owen, Frank Trentmann, Keith Crudgington, Amy
Slaton, Margaret Schabas, Richard Adelstein, Paul Wendt, Pat Kelley, Harvey
Rishikof, Will Ashworth, and Henry Atmore.
I also owe a great debt (and have paid off a great debt) to Harvard
University, where I have taught in history and in social studies for the past
seven years. Harvard very generously provided funds and leave-time for
travel and research. With this assistance, and with money provided by C.
Boyden Gray, I have been able to spend many fruitful weeks in the British
Library; and to employ gainfully, in order of appearance, Margaret
Menninger, Mike Vazquez, Steve Blank, Steve Burt, Maia Gemmell, Chris
Bavitz, Amy Cerrito, and Julia Torrie. They have kept me well supplied with
photocopies and good conversation. Harvard has also brought me into
contact with a constant stream of inspiring students, who always patiently
encourage me as I try various ideas on for size. Among many others, I learned
a great deal in the course of teaching Carrie Fox, Maya Jasanoff, and Ken
Wainer. The staff of the Harvard history department, the Center for
European Studies, and the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies have also
been an enormous help, especially Sue Borges and Maia Low. Finally, I wish
to thank the editorial staff at Routledge, especially Heather McCallum, who
first expressed interest in the manuscript; and Simon Wilson and Dean
Hanley, who have adroitly seen it through to publication.
I regret that my father, Russell Alborn, did not live to see me publish
my first book. I rejoice that Alix Cooper has been with me throughout the
arduous process of writing and revising it, and has somehow managed to
retain her patience and her sense of humor. I dedicate book number one,
and hopefully many to follow, to Alix.
viii
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
BH Business History
BM Bankers’ Magazine
BPP British Parliamentary Papers
EHR Economic History Review
JIB Journal of the Institute of Bankers
JSSL Journal of the Statistical Society of London
RN Railway News
RT Railway Times

All references to Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (shortened as Hansard in
references) are to the 3rd series (1830–92) unless otherwise noted.
ix