Research handbook on the history of corporate and company law edited by Harwell Wells (I. Herman Stern Professor of Law, Temple University, James E. Beasley School of Law, US).

Contents: Introduction / (Harwell Wells) -- Part I Taking shape -- 1. Islamic law and economic development / Jared Rubin -- 2. Business organizations in India prior to the British East India Company / Vikramaditya Khanna -- 3. Business organizations and organizational innovation in late Medieval Italy / Yadira González de Lara -- 4. Trading with strangers: the corporate form in the move from municipal governance to overseas trade / Ron Harris -- Part II Modern Europe -- 5. The development of English Company law before 1900 / John D. Turner -- 6. Shareholder primacy, labour, and the historic ambivalence of UK company law / Marc T. Moore -- 7. German company law 1794-1897 / Timothy W. Guinnane -- 8. German corporate law in the Twentieth century / Thilo Kuntz -- 9. Change for continuity: the making of the Société Anonyme in 19th century France / Jean Rochat -- 10. Classes of shares and voting rights in the history of Italian corporate law / Giulio Sandrelli and Marco Ventoruzzo -- 11. A history of the corporation in Spain in the twentieth century: towards Europe / Susana Martínez-Rodríguez -- 12. EU company law harmonization between convergence and varieties of capitalism / Martin Gelter -- Part III Asia -- 13. Corporation law in late Imperial China / Teemu Ruskola -- 14. The stakeholder approach to corporate law: a historical perspective from India / Umakanth Varottil -- 15. Japanese Corporate law and corporate governance in historical perspective / Bruce Aronson -- Part IV North America -- 16. The evolution of Mexican mercantile and corporate laws / Aurora Gomez-Galvarriato and Gustavo Del Angel -- 17. A history of Canadian corporate law: a divergent path from the American model? / Fenner L. Stewart -- 18. For- and nonprofit special corporations in America, 1608-1860 / Robert E. Wright -- 19. Legitimating power: a brief history of modern US corporate law / Dalia T. Mitchell -- 20. Adolf Berle, E. Merrick Dodd, and the new American Corporatism of 1932 / William Bratton and Michael Wachter -- 21. Corporate law and the history of corporate social responsibility / Lyman Johnson -- 22. Evolutionary models of corporate law / Amitai Aviram -- Contents.

Today, the corporation plays a dominant role in economics, politics, and societies across the globe. Understanding the corporation means understanding its legal framework but until recently, the origins and evolution of corporate law have received relatively little attention. This Handbook sheds new light on the historical development of both the corporation and business organization law. This extensive collection brings together contributions from an array of international academics to provide the first wide-ranging history of the laws of corporations and business organizations from ancient to modern times. The contributors offer a global exploration of the development of corporation and company law, moving beyond the United States and Western Europe to present studies in Mexico, India and China, as well as addressing the trajectory of scholarly debate. Not only do the contributions examine the growth of the law of public corporation, they also address the development of laws governing other business forms. This Handbook will prove an invaluable resource for corporation law and business scholars, as well as business and legal historians and economists.