Massachusetts: Deep within the roots of the American revolution is a little-known fact that the colonists could not charter or incorporate a business without the approval of the crown which, of course, was the King of England. This detail has eluded many historians and it is rarely taught in high school history classes.
At the time of the American revolution, the need to create new businesses was pent up; there was a backlog. People often subverted an application for a charter to the King of England. They used creative alternatives. Without question, the pressing need to incorporate businesses was the gun powder on Lexington Green and the Concord Bridge.
The prequel, or the first act of in independence, was over 100 years earlier in 1636 when the colonists started Harvard University. Finally on June 9, 1650, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts actually approved that charter submitted by Henry Dunster, then president of Harvard. Called "The Harvard Corporation," it is the first and the oldest corporation in North America. Dunster and his gang turned their backs on King Charles I. And, after Charles was beheaded, the leaders of the Bay Colony made it formal, turning their backs on Oliver Cromwell and the English Parliament.
Oscar Handlin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, reveals within 10 pages that starting a business is in our blood; it's part of the way we define ourselves. See
Chapter 1: The Development of the Corporation, The Corporation: A Theological Inquiry, editors, Michael Novak & John Cooper, AEI.
By 1775 the need for corporations rang out with the "shot that was heard around the world." King George III, 1738 - 1820, lost the colonies in America because he did not understand their need to create new businesses.
In Handlin's words, this story is quite remarkable: "In 1800 the United States was only beginning its history as an independent nation. It was an under-developed country, primarily agricultural, with a population of perhaps 4 or 5 million along the Atlantic coast. Already, however, the United States had more corporations, and more explicitly business corporations, than all of Europe put together..."
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