Prof. Philip Stern (Duke University)
This intensive course explores the idea of the corporation in European political thought, from its origins in the medieval Church, cities, and universities to European colonial expansion and the modern multinational company. Along the way, we will consider questions such as: what role has corporate theory played in shaping European ideas about political authority? Are corporations best understood as persons or societies? Where and why do we draw lines between economic and political thought, “public” and “private” law and authority, or between states and other forms of jurisdiction and power? How should we understand the connection between the history of the corporation and modern empire, global capitalism, international law, and state formation? In raising these problems, we will also consider the challenges of treating the archives of non-state institutions—for example, administrative minutes, legal records, ledgers, institutional correspondence—as proper sources and subjects of intellectual, rather than economic or institutional, histories. The broader goal of the seminar will thus be to engage and complicate our understanding of pluralistic foundations of European ideas about state and sovereignty as well as the implications of such discussions for the methodology of the history of political thought itself.