Catalogue

Companies & Organizations

The employers named in the timeline. Each page records what the organization was, the work it organized, and whether it is still here. Categories that were never a single firm stay on the chapter and out of this list.

Houses and charters

Family firms, royal houses of trade, and the first companies that sold shares to people who never saw the ship.

The Medici BankDissolvedEurope's largest bank in the fifteenth century, run as a family partnership with branches from London to Rome.Company · Florence · 1397 – 1494
The Hanseatic LeagueDissolvedA confederation of merchant towns that dominated Baltic and North Sea trade, and employed a private law of its own.Organization · Lübeck · c. 1356 – 1669
Gutenberg's workshopDissolvedThe first workshop to combine a press, movable metal type, and oil ink as a single business.Organization · Mainz · c. 1450 – 1455
Peter Schöffer's pressDissolvedThe press of Gutenberg's former partner, which turned an experiment into a durable printing business.Company · Mainz · 1457 – 1503
The Fugger companyDissolvedJakob Fugger's Augsburg house, banker to the Habsburgs and one of the richest firms of the sixteenth century.Company · Augsburg · 1485 – 1657
The Casa da ÍndiaDissolvedThe Portuguese crown's office for the Cape trade: cargoes, contracts, and the men who sailed them.Organization · Lisbon · 1503 – 1833
The Casa de ContrataciónDissolvedSeville's royal house of trade, which licensed every Spanish voyage to the Americas.Organization · Seville · 1503 – 1790
The Welser companyDissolvedAn Augsburg merchant house that financed voyages and, for a generation, held a colonial grant in Venezuela.Company · Augsburg · c. 1490 – 1614
The Aldine PressDissolvedAldus Manutius's Venice shop, which made scholarly printing a brand and the small book a product.Company · Venice · 1494 – 1597
The House of ElzevirDissolvedThe Leiden booksellers who turned classical and scientific texts into a cross-border trade.Company · Leiden · 1580 – 1712
The East India CompanyDissolvedA chartered English trading firm that became a territorial power in India, and the largest employer of its kind.Company · London · 1600 – 1874
The Dutch East India CompanyDissolvedThe first joint-stock company on a modern scale, with ships, forts, a private army, and a dividend.Company · Amsterdam · 1602 – 1799
The Bank of AmsterdamDissolvedThe city bank that made Dutch commercial credit reliable, and gave merchants a place to settle debts.Organization · Amsterdam · 1609 – 1819
The Dutch West India CompanyDissolvedThe chartered company for the Dutch Atlantic, including the slave trade, sugar, and New Netherland.Company · Amsterdam · 1621 – 1792
The Bank of EnglandActiveFounded to fund a war, it became the institution underneath British public credit.Organization · London · Since 1694
Lloyd'sActiveThe coffee-house market that became the place where the world's ships, and later much else, were insured.Organization · London · Since c. 1688
The South Sea CompanyDissolvedA chartered firm remembered for the 1720 crash, not for the trade its charter promised.Company · London · 1711 – 1853
The Coalbrookdale worksAbsorbedAbraham Darby's ironworks, the first to smelt iron with coke at a commercial scale.Company · Coalbrookdale · 1709 – 1929
Boulton & WattDissolvedThe partnership that sold steam engines efficient enough to leave the coal mine and enter the factory.Company · Birmingham · 1775 – 1895
Arkwright's millsDissolvedCromford, the water-powered factory that put a workforce behind one gate and a bell.Company · Cromford · Since 1771
WedgwoodReorganizedJosiah Wedgwood's works, which industrialized a craft and sold it under a maker's name.Company · Stoke-on-Trent · Since 1759
Hope & Co.AbsorbedAmsterdam's leading merchant bank, lending to governments and underwriting trade.Company · Amsterdam · Since 1762
The Rothschild housesActiveThe family houses that financed states across borders, and then the railways those states wanted.Company · Frankfurt, then London and Paris · Since c. 1760
Baring BrothersDissolvedLondon's great merchant bank, underwriter of trade and foreign loans for two centuries.Company · London · 1762 – 1995

Mills, railways, and corporations

The employers that put a workforce on a clock, then built the staff who managed it.

The employers of the present

Companies still operating. Where a later timeline chapter mentions one, that chapter is a projection, and the page says so.