The Origins of Company Law: Methods and Approaches (Contemporary Studies in Corporate Law)

This book provides histories of company law, uniting a variety of approaches from law, business and management, economics, and history. What were the origins of company law? How did it begin? Why did it change? There is no single answer to these questions. Each discipline, and sub-discipline, has a different approach and method that brings different facets of study to the fore.This multidisciplinary endeavour is immensely valuable for debates taking place now among policy-makers in the UK and US about returning to historic modes of company regulation. The book brings together Anglo-American scholarship that will not only shed greater light on the history of company law but also influence contemporary debates about our ability to return to, or learn from, the past.Historical research has great value here because it not only generates new insights into the evolution of present legal rules, but also corrects misunderstandings and misapprehensions about them.The book shows how this body of