Muscovy Company Research Articles

Efficient Transactors or Rent-Seeking Monopolists? The Rationale for Early Chartered Trading Companies

India companies, established in 1600 and 1602, respectively, with a national monopoly of trade with Asia. Other English companies to be granted trading monopoly charters included the Muscovy Company (1553), the Hudson's Bay Company (1670), and the Royal African Company (1672), and similar rights were granted to foreign companies by the governments of France, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark. The grant of exclusive trading rights to particular areas had long been enjoyed by chartered companies, a notable example being the Company of Merchant Adventurers. The earliest companies, which handled well-established trades, were organized as regulated companies in which the governing body, having negotiated trading treaties and established warehouse facilities, merely set broad operational parameters within which members traded on their own account. Entry to the regulated companies was relatively unimpeded, often through payment of a small fine. The companies that appeared from the middle of the sixteenth century were rather different, their monopoly status being seen as encouragement and recompense for forging new trading links. Entry was by the purchase of shares in a joint-stock company, which exploited monopoly powers by trading as a corporate enterprise. Some shareholders were merchants actively engaged in trade, but others were passive investors who delegated management to paid officials directed by a governor and assistants elected from amongst their ranks. Adam Smith, no friend of the chartered companies, argued that this separation of ownership from control contributed to gross administrative inefficiency, inattention to detail, and the pursuit of managerial goals, which raised prices to consumers and reduced returns to shareholders. He believed that only the extraction of monopoly rents ensured the success and continuance of such companies.1 In a recent series of articles, Ann Carlos and Stephen Nicholas have cast doubt upon this traditional interpretation. They argue that the joint-stock chartered companies, far from being comparatively inefficient institutions, represented the optimal organizational form for conducting long-distance trade. The chartered companies' business, like that of the late-nineteenth-century multinationals, was characterized by a large volume of transactions in many different locations, which prompted a similar organizational response, namely, the adoption of a vertically integrated structure and an administrative hierarchy that enabled them to economize on transaction costs and overcome the limits to management encountered by owner-managed firms. Like modern multinationals, the chartered companies adopted control systems that were intended to limit opportunistic

Sources of Latitude Error in English Sixteenth Century Navigation

An examination of accounts of sixteenth-century voyages shows that the estimations of latitude then arrived at by astronomical means were subject to widely varying error. The purpose of the present study has been to discover by practical experiments at sea, with replicas of instruments in use at the time, to what extent the size and irregularity of the errors can be attributed to the characteristics of the instruments and to what extent they arise from other causes. Observations were made from a 9-ton yacht under conditions not wholly dissimilar to those obtaining in some of the very small ships whose voyages are recorded.The evidence for latitude errors is derived from published studies and from the writer's own analyses of three voyages made in northern waters by ships of the Muscovy Company: those of Stephen Borough of 1556 and 1557 and that of Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman of 1580. These were chosen because the masters in that Company's service received the best nagivational advice of the time3 and from the early 1550s onwards regularly recorded both latitude and compass variation. Furthermore, the relatively low altitude of the Sun in the higher latitudes was conducive to greater accuracy with a cross-staff.

A New Curia Regis: The Judicature of the House of Lords in the 1620s

On I9 March i 62 I the Lord Chancellor of England, Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans, was charged with corruption by the House of Commons before the House of Lords. Eight weeks later the House of Lords was presented with a writ of error in a suit of common law involving land in Ireland. Later in the same session SirJames Cunningham, a Scottish adventurer, petitioned the House for help in his dispute with the Muscovy Company over rights to fish for Greenland whales. During the fall session of the same Parliament, SirJohn Bouchier tried to have the House alter a decision of Bacon's successor asjudge in Chancery. Finally, throughout the session the House, while enforcing its privileges, released the servants of various lords who were arrested during ordinary litigation. Thus, within one parliamentthat of i 62 1 the House of Lords received cases posing the problems that provided the history of the judicature of the House for the rest of the seventeenth century. Impeachments, appeals (both common law and equity), privilege claims, and causes not previously decided elsewhere were included in these instances, as were Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen. The parliament of i 62 I was the first in which all such matters appeared together in the House of Lords. The definition of judicature usually included all of these disputes in the early seventeenth century. This communication will describe and analyse the judicature of the House of Lords in the I 620S in order to cast some light on the House's claim, which historians have accepted, to be, as a court, 'the Highest from whence others ought to draw their light... '.I An investigation of the House's judicature will also give an indication of what lords did with some of their time and energy during a parliament such a study is a step in the process of remedying the over-concentration of historians' attention on the House of Commons. However, this paper makes a modest claim because judicature was not the sole reason for a lord to come to a parliament, and the judicature of the I620S was only occasionally of great importance to the politics or the law of that decade. While the focus will be on the events of the I620S, the foundations were being laid for later developments, most importantly during the reign of Charles II and the nineteenth century. As a word, 'judicature' is not easily defined and men of the I62os did not use it consistently. Perhaps, short of a complete description of the House's activities, Sir

Five Centuries of Dead Reckoning

The term ‘dead reckoning’, so the Admiralty Navigation Manual (1938) says, is a corruption of the old ‘ded-uced reckoning’ or ‘position by account’, and is used to cover all positions that are obtained from ‘the course the ship steers and her speed through the water, and from no other factors.’ (The last italics are ours.) Had Master William Borough, Chief Pilot of the Muscovy Company, and presently to be appointed to Queen Elizabeth's Navy Board, come across this definition, he would have picked a two-fold quarrel with their present Lordships at Whitehall. For his use and explanation of the term is the earliest of which we have knowledge, although it does not appear even then to have been new.

The Dawn of Modern Navigation

How did Francis Drake navigate his ship when in 1577 he embarked upon his famous voyage round the world ? Strictly speaking he did not navigate her, for the task was delegated to subordinate officers. The Pelican (or Golden Hind as she was later renamed) carried, as was customary, a master and a pilot whose duty it was to make the necessary observations and lay the ship upon her course. But these had signed on for a supposed voyage to Alexandria to load currants, and Drake knew well enough that no English pilot could then compare with a pilot of Spain or Portugal, whether in training, experience or equipment: for these nations, as pioneers of the Great Discoveries, had also taken the lead in the development of nautical science and in the formal schooling of seamen. That explains why Captain Francis furnished himself with the latest chart from Lisbon, and why, when he reached African waters, he kidnapped a Portuguese pilo to sail him into the Pacific, only to maroon the unfortunate man in Central America when he had served his turn and a Spaniard was indicated for the next stage of the voyage. Hitherto no English ship had left the Atlantic, and apart from a few men trained in the Muscovy Company's service the average English sailor laughed at the idea of navigating with charts and instruments. He had his compass, he knew his landmarks, and once he was in soundings he could cast the lead and feel his way into harbour blindfold. To see a man ‘shooting the Sun’ (as it was already termed) with a cross-staff was an occasion for mockery. ‘Have you strook it?’ he would cry, ‘Have you strook it?’ And as for charts, he wanted none of your sheepskins, he could make his voyage as well upon a board! It was upon a prepared sheepskin that the mediaeval charts were drawn and painted, the neck to the left, while the ‘board’ was the traverse-board marked with the thirty-two rhumbs. These were pierced with holes at regular intervals, into which pegs were inserted at each turn of the sand-glass, thus recording the time sailed on any particular point of the compass.

The English in Russia During the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century

The following paper contains the results of an independent study of an episode in the commercial history of this country which has been the subject of some important researches during recent years. The beginnings of mercantile adventure in Russia and other regions of Northern Europe and the Far East have been related by contemporary men of action, most of whose narratives have been carefully edited in the Hakluyt Series; but the political and economic environment of the Muscovy Company itself was still in need of elucidation from contemporary State Papers and other records. Some of these sources have been used by Madame Lubimenko, Dr. A. J. Gerson and Mr. O. T. Williams for special aspects of the subject; but a large mass of material of the first importance has remained untouched.

I.—Coal in Spitsbergen

Although the existence of coal in Spitsbergen has been known for a very long time, it is only of recent years that development has been undertaken on any considerable scale. As early as 1610 explorers brought back with them small amounts of coal to burn on the voyage home, and in 1614 the islands were formally claimed for James I by the Muscovy Company. The coal was also described from the scientific point of view by Nathorst and others at various dates, but no attempt was made to work it till about 1904, when the Arctic Coal Company, an American concern, opened a mine at Advent Bay.

<italic>Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period: The Organization and Early History of the Muscovy Company</italic>. By <sc>Armand J. Gerson</sc>, Ph.D. <italic>English Trading Expeditions into Asia under the Authority of the Muscovy Company (1557–1581)</italic>. By <sc>Earnest V. Vaughn</sc>, Ph. D. <italic>English Trade in the Baltic during the Reign of Elizabeth</italic>. By <sc>Neva Ruth Deardorff</sc>, Ph.D. [Publications

Journal Article Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period: The Organization and Early History of the Muscovy Company. By Armand J. Gerson, Ph.D. English Trading Expeditions into Asia under the Authority of the Muscovy Company (1557–1581). By Earnest V. Vaughn, Ph. D. English Trade in the Baltic during the Reign of Elizabeth. By Neva Ruth Deardorff, Ph.D. [Publications of the University of Pennsylvania.] (New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1912. Pp. xi, 344.) Get access Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period: The Organization and Early History of the Muscovy Company. By Gerson Armand J., Ph.D. English Trading Expeditions into Asia under the Authority of the Muscovy Company (1557–1581). By Vaughn Earnest V., Ph. D. English Trade in the Baltic during the Reign of Elizabeth. By Deardorff Neva Ruth, Ph.D. [Publications of the University of Pennsylvania.] (New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1912. Pp. xi, 344.) W. R. Scott W. R. Scott Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 20, Issue 1, October 1914, Pages 144–146, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/20.1.144 Published: 01 October 1914

Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period: The Organization and Early History of the Muscovy Company

Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period: The Organization and Early History of the Muscovy Company

Muscovy company:

Journal Article Muscovy company: Get access R. J. Fynmore R. J. Fynmore 1Sandgate Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s10-VI, Issue 144, 29 September 1906, Page 253, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s10-VI.144.253b Published: 29 September 1906

The Early History of Spitsbergen 1

“INASMUCH as industrie and diligence are two principall steps to atchieve great enterprises, and negligence and idlenesse are enemies to the same; we would have you in this charge committed unto you, to embrace the one, and to avoide the other.” Such were the instructions of the Muscovy Company to Thomas Edge, the commander of its third expeditionto Spitsbergen, in 1610. By these same steps to success Sir Martin Conway has collected the widely-scattered materials of Spitsbergen history, and by wis selection and with high literary skill has wrought them into an addition to Arctic literature of unusual interest. The volume tells us in greater detail than has ever before been possible the history of Spits-bergen from its discovery by Barents in 1596, to the beginning of its scientific exploration by the expedition of Sven Loven in 1837. It is, on its own lines, an ideal geographical monograph, from its bibliographic thoroughness, its sound literary judgment, and its evidence of exhaustive research in British and Continental libraries. It contains much of interest to naturalists, with its fresh information regarding the early whale fishery in the Greenland seas.