A Spectator Book of the Year

“Brilliant, ambitious, and often surprising. A remarkable contribution to the current global debate about empire.” —William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

“Remarkable…The richness of detail and evidence that Stern…brings to his subject is [new]—as is the lucidity with which he organises his material over six long chapters that stretch from the mid-16th century almost to the present.” —Linda Colley, Financial Times  

“[A] commanding history of British corporate imperialism.” —Michael Ledger-Lomas, London Review of Books

Across four centuries and multiple continents, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power. 

Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, colonialism’s legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago. 

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.

"A landmark book…[a] bold reframing of the history of the British Empire." - Foreign Affairs

"British colonialism…Stern says, was conceived by investors, creditors, entrepreneurs, and, lest we forget, parvenus and embezzlers. This cast of men-on-the-make flourished alongside sovereigns and their ministers and produced what Stern calls ‘venture colonialism’—a form of overseas expansion that was driven by a belief that ‘the public business of empire was and had always been best done by private enterprise.’ The history of British colonialism is really the history of the joint-stock corporation." - Wall Street Journal

"Remarkable…The richness of detail and evidence that Stern…brings to his subject is [new]—as is the lucidity with which he organises his material over six long chapters that stretch from the mid-16th century almost to the present." - Financial Times

"Empire, Incorporated offers a refreshingly new take on British imperialism…[It] is a remarkably comprehensive account of how—from the reigns of Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, and from some of the earliest plantation projects in Ireland to the Falklands War—corporations have played a defining role in the British Empire." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"[A] commanding history of British corporate imperialism…Stern avoids a trite parallelism that reduces chartered companies to the forerunners of modern multinationals. The East India Company didn’t just bow out to Apple or Tesla; instead, it has undergone a sort of resurrection…But it’s also possible to finish this book convinced that the British Empire has been just one phase in the pragmatic imagination of Anglophone capitalism." - London Review of Books

"The genius of Empire, Incorporated lies in weaving a coherent narrative that is at once solid and lucid, explaining how corporations are structured and how they ended up ruling the world, creating empires…Scholarly, engaging, and entertaining." - Mekong Review

"An exceptionally well-written, comprehensive narrative of 400 years of British colonialism." - International Journal of Maritime History

"Stern is a tireless researcher and an accomplished explainer of geopolitical and financial matters. This is a consequential reconsideration of the history of colonialism." - Publishers Weekly