Series Editor’s Introduction

I am delighted to present this special volume of PPST, Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics, edited by Emily Erikson. Based upon a wonderfully stimulating conference held at Yale University (to which I had the pleasure of attending and in which I happily participated), the volume offers a fresh perspective on chartered companies. As Erikson and her collaborator Valentina Assenova make clear in her Introduction, chartered companies have been central to the expansion of European modernity and the making of global capitalism. But scholars have only begun to fully explore their complexities and impact. This volume represents the best work in that direction.