The first corporations pooled risk for colonial sea ventures.

Evidence

Such financial mechanisms enable a few possibilities. First, they allow many capitalists to pool vast quantities of resources for risky or long-term ventures that no single capitalist would or could take on alone. For instance, the first corporations were formed to exploit maritime colonialism, sharing the risk of dangerous exploratory sea voyages, slave-taking and settlement among hundreds or sometimes thousands of individual investors (see Baucom 2005). Another example might be the construction of railways, canals, telecommunications lines or other huge acts of “civil” infrastructure essential to the expansion of capitalist interests, or, similarly, the establishment of banks and insurance houses, which require a great deal of capital. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 490

Categorization

• XREF: The maritime-colonialist origin of the corporation ties directly to the imperial-finance theme in deWaard’s cultural critique of financialization.