Chartered Trading Companies and Leagues

Merchant enterprises and trading federations chartered or recognized by a state to hold trade, territorial or quasi-governmental privileges over a defined region or route, the characteristic commercial institution of the early modern age of exploration and colonization. Belongs here: national East India companies (the English East India Company, the Dutch East India Company, the French East India Company), the Dutch West India Company, Hudson's Bay Company, the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company, and the medieval Hanseatic League as a federation of merchant towns holding equivalent trading privileges. Does not belong here: a bank or merchant-banking house that financed trade without itself holding a trading charter, filed under Banking and Financial Houses, and a present-day industrial or commercial corporation, filed under Industrial and Commercial Corporations.