Another Now

on 24 September 1599, in a half-timbered building off Moorgate Fields not far from where Shakespeare was struggling to complete Hamlet, something momentous happened. A company was founded whose ownership was cut up into tiny pieces to be bought and sold freely and anonymously, like pieces of silver. One could own a piece of the new company without being involved in it, indeed without even telling anyone. The first global joint stock company was thus born – undoubtedly Tudor England’s most revolutionary invention. Its name? The East India Company.