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We’ve all seen the memes. Tapestries with text proclaiming how great medieval workers had it compared to us lowly modern folk. Claims of vacation day abundance and shorter working days get traction precisely because they sound too good to be true.
Well, are they too good to be true?
Can it really be the case that serfs toiling in muddy fields during a time of the plague were living large compared to office workers stuck in traffic. They say we spent 54 hours a year in traffic but surely that’s more if you live in Los Angeles?
Medieval European society was radically different to our modern age after all, so it makes sense that their attitudes to work and industry would be alien to us. Then again, they weren’t as knowledgeable as us, nor had the higher standard of living we enjoy daily. Things like electricity, medicine, internet and of course all you can eat buffets! So, is the grass always greener on the other side or are 22nd century employees stuck in
Plato’s cave? We’re going to settle the case once and for all.
It’s time to learn how history works as we investigate “who had it better? Medieval peasants or us?”
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#jobs #History #career
Link To My Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam Ely
Video Created By: Gabriela Gutierrez
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
-----
SOURCES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfIwUlY44CM
https://www.oldest.org/technology/advertisements/
https://www.petepolgar.com/blog/ancient-egypt-the-origins-of-advertising/
https://surnames.behindthename.com/
https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Town-Crier/
https://bettermarketing.pub/the-contrepreneur-formula-what-it-is-and-why-it-works-so-well-24d6939abb75
https://www.bmediagroup.com/news/history-of-billboard-advertising/
https://clearcode.cc/blog/history-advertising-agency/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/mass-media
https://www.britannica.com/art/soap-opera
https://www.lcca.org.uk/blog/education/history-of-branding/
https://www.simplypsychology.org/little-albert.html
https://www.apetogentleman.com/behind-the-hype-why-is-everyone-so-crazy-about-supreme/
https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/getting-started-on-twitter-guide-for-brands.html
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#business #History #entrepreneur
Link To Our Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam
Video Created By:
Svibe Multimedia Studio
Editor: Cardan
Media Gatherer: Andrea Rivas
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
-----
Leonardo Del Vecchio turned eyewear from archaic medical devices into a must-
have fashion accessory.
By the time he died at 87 years old, he’d created an entire monopoly through his
parent company, Luxottica, and had accumulated a net worth of $21.9B. [1]
And it all started with a tiny workshop in a quiet Italian town.
He owned companies like Ray-Bans, licensing deals with Gucci, and health
insurance infrastructure like EyeMed. [2]
However, some say his market share is an optical illusion.
Only 10% of global sales are from Luxottica. Apparently, his crossover with luxury
brands is what makes us think he was a bigger player than he actually was.
Then again, critics point to the mountain of evidence which suggests his vertically
integrated conglomerate controlled the market on so many levels that they could
get away with jacking up the prices.
Not only was he the guy that made sunglasses cool, he was also the guy that made
sunglasses expensive.
Leonardo may have had skills to get hired, but he didn’t have their respect to get
noticed.
But he didn’t care so long as he got his pay check.
300 Lira wasn’t enough to strike it out on his own, it was barely enough to get by,
but by squirrelling it away he’d save enough to study engraving at the Brera
Academy of Art.
By the time he graduated with that diploma he was out of institutions and on his
own.
Thankfully he had everything he needed to stake his fortune: passion, skills, and
hardship.
All he needed now was a way to focus these onto a singular vision. So he set out to
the North of Italy to find it.
It’s time to learn how history works as we look into the life story of Leonard Del
Vecchio.
SOURCES
1. https://www.forbes.com/profile/leonardo-del-vecchio/?sh=38b0c225673d
2. https://www.cascade.app/studies/luxottica-strategy-study
3. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/obituaries/article/2022/07/01/leonardo-del-
vecchio-italian-billionaire-and-founder-of-luxottica-dies-at-
87_5988644_15.html
4. https://www.childrenshomes.org.uk/MilanMartinitt/
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yZtI_tV2zI
6. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/10/the-invisible-power-of-
big-glasses-eyewear-industry-essilor-luxottica
7. https://www.essilorluxottica.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/15-year-
licensing-renewal-armani/
8. https://www.essilorluxottica.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/15-year-
licensing-renewal-armani/
9. https://money.cnn.com/2001/02/22/deals/sunglasshut/
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00wQYmvfhn4
11. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/world/europe/leonardo-del-vecchio-
dead.html
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The most common historical fallacy is assuming the past was like the society we have now, but with inferior technology and lower living standards. I’m calling it the ‘Flintstone Fallacy’ because it’d be like imagining if the Stone Age had traffic wardens patrolling the parking lots filled with wheels and wooden clubs.
It can hard to understand that for most of human history, civilisations survived without what we have today, like a police force, showbusiness and even advertising.
Noam Chomsky talks about how the baseball games he attended as a youth in 30s and 40s America were barren of any sponsored publicity. Compare that to any major sporting event now, and you can’t help but notice advertising taking up every inch of every sports shirt, stadium banner and Jumbotron.
Unless, you don’t notice advertising is so commonplace now that maybe you no longer see it. You might even think it’s not having an effect on you…
So how did we get here? How did advertising start? How has it shaped society? And how many adverts will appear during this video?
It’s time to learn How History Works as we explore "How Advertising Infected Everything".
------
#advertising #history #marketing
Link To My Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam Ely
Video Created By: Gabriela Gutierrez
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
------
SOURCES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfIwUlY44CM
https://www.oldest.org/technology/advertisements/
https://www.petepolgar.com/blog/ancient-egypt-the-origins-of-advertising/
https://surnames.behindthename.com/
https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Town-Crier/
https://bettermarketing.pub/the-contrepreneur-formula-what-it-is-and-why-it-works-so-well-24d6939abb75
https://www.bmediagroup.com/news/history-of-billboard-advertising/
https://clearcode.cc/blog/history-advertising-agency/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/mass-media
https://www.britannica.com/art/soap-opera
https://www.lcca.org.uk/blog/education/history-of-branding/
https://www.simplypsychology.org/little-albert.html
https://www.apetogentleman.com/behind-the-hype-why-is-everyone-so-crazy-about-supreme/
https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/getting-started-on-twitter-guide-for-brands.html
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#history #business #samsung
Link To Our Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam
Video Created By:
Svibe Multimedia Studio
Editor: Cardan
Media Gatherer: Andrea Rivas
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
-----
Samsung is the largest company in South Korea, making up more than twenty percent of the major economy’s total GDP. [1]
It pulled this off by making…everything!
We’re talking smartphones and washing machines to military equipment and the world’s largest ships.
The company employs so many people, and is responsible for so much of South Korea’s way of life, that some consider the secretive family at the top to be like a reincarnated royal dynasty.
Apparently, getting arrested isn’t scandalous enough to ruin their image!
What’s even more shocking than sheer breadth and power of this formidable conglomerate is its humble beginnings.
Less than 70 years ago, Samsung was a tiny family-run fish trader. Now, it’s bigger than most countries.
Samsung’s founder was Lee Byung-chul.
He was born on 12th February 1920 to a wealthy land-owning family but the silver spoon in his mouth wasn’t going to make life any easier for him. [2]
Korea was on the verge of seismic change. Instability was about to rock its foundations. Lee’s family’s status among the ruling class was about to become a target on his back.
That’s because just a few months after his birth, Japan officially annexed Korea as part of its colonialist agenda.
But by 1938, he’d put that talent for adaptability into action when he dropped out of college and moved to a neighbouring province.
Here he set up his own company called, well, you know the name. You’re watching this video aren’t you?
‘Samsung’ roughly translates to “three stars”. Each star represents the tenets of the company: ‘greatness’, ‘prosperity’, and ‘longevity’.
At the time you could fault him for being arrogant. I mean, ‘greatness’ is a good aspiration for any local grocery trader. But are ‘dried fish’ really ‘prosperous?’
Well, Lee was doing something right.
He had 40 employees under his belt, all working together to deal in noodles and locally-grown groceries.
Initial customers were based in Korea, but soon he was exporting to China.
By the time the 35-year Japanese rule of Korea ended in 1945, there were new business opportunities to be found. [6]
While Japan was being rebuilt with the help of Allied Forces, Korea had its own identity crisis.
In just a few years Lee would be able to redefine the identity and nature of his own company.
In 1947, the ‘Samsung’ company was doing so well that Lee could uproot his HQ to Seoul where all the big fish were. As in, other companies. Not fish for selling.
In less than a decade, he was living up to the first two stars of his company’s name: greatness and prosperity.
But the third star of longevity would require a new way of thinking.
It’s time to learn How History Works as we dissect ‘How Samsung Went From Selling Fish to Controlling a Country’.
- Sources -
SOURCES
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180905001400320
https://medium.com/@imabd489/from-a-small-trading-company-to-a-tech-giant-the-inspiring-story-of-samsungs-founder-904126263c4e
https://www.britannica.com/topic/yangban
https://www.history.com/topics/asian-history/korean-war
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/4/newsid_2494000/2494837.stm
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction
https://www.unc.mil/History/1951-1953-Armistice-Negotiations/
https://www.kdevelopedia.org/Development-Overview/all/may-16
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Labour unions are the hot topic of today, from Hollywood actors and
screenwriters all the way to McDonalds fry cooks and Amazon warehouse
workers
There’s a chance that your place of work has a union of its own. Or unions!
Maybe you’ve been in the situation where you didn’t know which workers
collective to join. Or maybe you’re an employer who has had to negotiate with striking employees time and time again. They are
basically all the same except they have different coloured hats.
From the outside, the difference from one union to another can seem trite or non-existent. Like Monty Python’s ‘People’s Front of Judea’ versus the ‘Judean People’s Front’.
But you only need to speak to a union leader to learn that their group
bargaining is better than the other guy’s group bargaining!
If you’re feeling confused, relax. That’s normal!
But maybe you’ve never encountered a union. Maybe your boss - or your
boss’s boss - wants nothing to do with them. Maybe you’ve wondered why
unions and companies are at each other’s throats all the time.
Are unions really the enemy of business or is the rivalry between them a spin
tactic from fat cats? Are they a thing of a past or is their history just getting
started? And why can’t you wear white after Labour Day?
Whatever your first-hand experience, unions aren’t going away any time soon so today we’re going to pick apart the picketers’ legacy to understand where they came from and where they’re going.
It’s time to learn how history works as we explore “The History of Unions”.
------
#HowHistoryWorks #History #Union
Link To My Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam Ely
Video Created By: Gabriela Gutierrez
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
------
Sources
1. https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/
2.https://www.thesquaremagazine.com/mag/article/202102freemasonry-and-
egyptomania/
3. https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/history-of-work-organization-648000/The-
craft-guilds
4. https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/industrial-revolution#labor-
movement
5. https://www.historycrunch.com/labor-movement-in-the-industrial-revolution.html#/
6. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/16/the-peterloo-massacre-what-was-
it-and-what-did-it-mean
7. https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/haymarket-riot
8. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65449777
9. https://time.com/5658699/white-after-labor-day/
10. https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-141/red-herrings-
famous-quotes-churchill-never-said/
11. https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
12. https://theblackwellfirm.com/the-relationship-between-labor-unions-and-the-mob/
13. https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ocgs/infiltrated-labor-unions
14. https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2006/03/something-for-nothing-unions/
15. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/49/enacted
16. https://www.history.com/news/margaret-thatcher-miners-strike-iron-lady
17. https://www.history.com/news/who-were-the-luddites
18. https://www.britannica.com/event/Banana-Massacre
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#tax #History #business
Link To Our Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam
Video Created By:
Svibe Multimedia Studio
Editor: Cardan
Media Gatherer: Andrea Rivas
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
-----
The U.S. tax code is 4 million words long. Shakespeare’s entire canon is just 900,000.
Thankfully most Americans use the ‘1040’ form, which is one of the simplest tax forms, at just 200 pages long!
Taxes are so confusing that when ‘Money Magazine’ asked 50 tax professionals to completing the same tax return for the same single family, they came up with 50 different answers! [1]
Seriously, is there anything worse than taxes?
Well, yes. More taxes!
Maybe we could be like ye olde English folk who were taxed on windows, or like the Russians who were taxed on beards. Maybe we could be like the Ancient Egyptians and get paid in beer – and taxed in beer! [2]
It depends on where you stand.
Are you convinced taxes are theft on successful people? You’d argue burdensome and convoluted tax laws fund wars and line the pockets of corrupt politicians.
But maybe you’re a realist because countries can’t be funded on bake sales. How else will we fund train lines, paved roads, and hospitals?
Normalizing taxation also normalised tax rebates. That’s good news for a slave owner, but still bad news for a slave…
Conducting censuses was tricky business though.
To ease the pain, taxes were based on entire communities rather than on individual homes. Provincial governments and local magistrates oversaw taxation, but the physical collection was auctioned off.
The Publicani were tax farmers, who would outbid each other for the pleasure of being the most hated person on the planet: the taxman.
If their bid won, then they paid the state the advance of the collection. These were effectively loans where Rome was expected to pay back any interest to the Publicani.
Tax collectors got to keep the interest plus anything in excess of their bid. However, they had to do the hard work of converting everything into coinage, and be prepared to make a loss if they weren’t able to recoup their bid. [6]
To lower that risk, some Roman tax collectors colluded with local politicians to buy up large quantities of grain at low rates, which they’d hold in reserve until they could mark up the value during a food shortage.
But give it a few hundred years and citizens would push back against the tax man, which is why the policies for paying your dues got a whole lot stranger.
It’s time to count the ways tax has changed the world to understand why “The History of Tax is Weird”.
- Sources -
1. https://www.shoeboxed.com/blog/10-fun-facts-about-taxes/
2.https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-beer-ruled-the-ancient-world 3.
chromeextension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.iaao.org/uploads/a_brief_hisory_of_property_tax.pdf
4. https://kpbl.pl/en/the-history-oftaxation/#:~:text=Ancient%20Egypt%3A%20In%20ancient%20Egypt,constru
ctio n%20of%20pyramids%20and%20temples.
5. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/422-2105/features/9594-egypt-taxsystem
6. https://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php
7. https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/medieval-taxes/
8. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/1066-and-the-norman
conquest/
9. https://www.britannica.com/topic/tallage
10. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/historymagazine/article/origins-of-england-folk-lore-robin-hood
11. https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/under-magna-carta-the-king-cannotimpose-taxes-without-the-approval-of-the-common-counsel-of-thekingdom-1215
12. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901904
13. https://www.history.org.uk/secondary/resource/2466/the-great-revolt-o
Goldman Sachs is what you think of when you hear the words ‘banking’, ‘Wall Street’ and ‘market crash’. The investment banking group is over one hundred and fifty years old but has kept its name since setting up way back in 1869. It’s a money-making machine that has invested in the likes of Spotify and Dropbox and was even the lead booker of Twitter.
It’s even committed almost 2 billion to philanthropic initiatives. But the name ‘Goldman Sachs’ is also synonymous with corruption, market manipulation, offshore tax havens and insider trading, to name but a few of his controversies.
Yet for all of these good deeds and sins, the giant of commerce wasn’t started by a hedge fund manager or stockbroker, but a humble immigrant with a knack for business and a hunger for the American dream. So how did a German immigrant build what would become an international powerhouse of finance? How unethical is the company? Will it be around forever or will it finally get its comeuppance?
It’s time to learn How History Works as we unravel the history of Goldman-Sachs.
------
#goldmansachs #History #banking
Link To My Other Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowMoneyWorks
Written By: Sam Ely
Video Created By: Gabriela Gutierrez
Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images
Music Provided By: Epidemic Sound
For sponsorship inquiries, please contact [email protected]
------
SOURCES
https://moneycheck.com/goldman-sachs-history/
https://www.goldmansachs.com/careers/possibilities/spotify/
https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/marcus-goldman/
https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/a-brief-history-of-gs.pdf
https://www.businessinsider.com/rise-and-fall-of-sears-bankruptcy-store-closings?op=1&r=US&IR=T#three-years-after-sears-held-its-ipo-becoming-the-first-major-us-retailer-to-do-so-clothing-mogul-julius-rosenwald-took-over-as-president-4
https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/1917-henry-goldman-leaves.html
https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-gold-standard-contribute-to-the-great-depression
https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/1928-Goldman-Sachs-Trading-Corporation.html
https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/sidney-weinberg-networked-his-way-to-the-top-of-wall-street/
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/henry-ford
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/henry-ford
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-ceo-timeline-factbox-idUSKBN1K71EW
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/day-market-history-penn-central-180215022.html?guccounter=1
https://meaww.com/empires-of-new-york-how-rudy-giuliani-took-down-illegal-insider-trading-on-wall-street-in-1980-s-cnbc
https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/financial-crisis-of-2007-2008
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45515092
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24561376.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53529075
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#china #History #business
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Written By: Sam
Video Created By:
Svibe Multimedia Studio
Editor: Cardan
Media Gatherer: Andrea Rivas
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In 1981 this was China, a country struggling to feed its people after decades of attempted and failed economic experiments…
Today as of 2024 China is home to more billionaires than any other country on the planet… at least according to some sources.
Others still put America ahead but that’s mostly down to the fact that Chinese billionaires don’t only want to keep a low profile… they NEED to keep a low profile.
Just a few short decades ago the country was rounding up the bourgeois, and other “class traitors” and some habits die hard.
If the proliferation of billionaires in a “supposedly” communist country wasn’t already strange enough, the SPEED by which these men and women have skyrocketed from extreme poverty to the upper echelons of global wealth doesn’t really make sense… until you hear their stories.
Do you want to see the largest collection of billionaires in a single photo ever? Here it is… the 19th people's party congress held in 2017, where approximately 2,280 delegates sat down to set party policy for the next 5 years.
Approximately 100 of them were billionaires… With so many billionaires so close to the government it raises the question…
Did these people create the Chinese Economic Miracle, or were they just the ones that could seize their own means of production at the right time?
- Sources -
https://www.statista.com/statistics/299513/billionaires-top-countries/
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/china-gdp/
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/us-gdp/
http://2.https//www.politico.eu/article/chinas-promise-a-free-market-for-unfree-people/
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/26/1958-mao-zedong-ordered-sparrows-killed-ate-much-grain-caused-one-worst-environmental-disasters-history/
https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/great-chinese-famine/
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/gdp-gross-domestic-product
https://ycharts.com/indicators/japan_gdp_usd
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1987/133.htm
https://theconversation.com/to-get-rich-is-glorious-how-deng-xiaoping-set-china-on-a-path-to-rule-the-world-156836
https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings/deng-xiaoping-let-some-people-get-rich-first
https://www.biography.com/political-figures/deng-xiaoping
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/zhuo-lin-wife-of-china-s-late-paramount-leader-deng-xiaoping-1769226.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49806247
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-09/12/content_18588027.htm
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/11/chin-n29.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/obituaries/rong-yiren-a-chinese-billionaire-dies-at-89.html
https://fortune.com/2013/05/23/whats-driving-one-of-chinas-richest-men/
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/official-chinas-wanda-acquires-legendary-854827/
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/world/asia/wang-jianlin-abillionaire-at-the-intersection-of-business-and-power-in-china.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58579833
https://www.forbes.com/profile/wang-jianlin/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-wang-jianlin-once-chinas-richest-man-lost-dollar40-billion
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/business/dalian-wanda-group-china-debt.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20170724114244/https://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Chen_Dongsheng
https://www.forbes.c
Can you have royalty without a monarchy?
Some say that the lack of a King or Queen in the United States of America proves that the land of the free is free of a ruling class.
But judging from how the public rolls out the red carpet for certain family dynasties, it seems humans have a natural urge to worship elites. Some family trees reach this status through political empire, fortune, celebrity, or the arts.
For the DuPont family, their rise to the top was through a vast business enterprise that influenced politics but started with a humble French watchmaker way back in the 1700s. Now they are one of America’s preeminent industrialists and have been one of the nation’s richest families since the mid-19th century. They’ve also been dogged with controversy which is how you’ve heard of them even if you didn’t think you’d heard of them.
So how did one of America’s most elite families get its start overseas? And how influential are they? And is their political legacy one of respect or meddling? It’s time to learn How History Works as we explore ‘How A Watchmaker Started One Of the Oldest Fortune In The World’.
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#History #business #dupont
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Written By: Sam Ely
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Sources
https://www.britannica.com/topic/du-Pont-family
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/economics-biographies/pierre-samuel-du-pont-de-nemours
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/louisiana-lewis-clark/the-louisiana-purchase/
https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2021/07/du-pont/
https://www.hagley.org/about-us
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/samuel-francis-du-pont
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8073370&page=1
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2019-05-02/ty-article/.premium/researcher-dupont-helped-nazi-germany-out-of-ideology/0000017f-f4c5-d044-adff-f7fd87d30000
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/manhattan-project-spotlight-ei-du-pont-de-nemours-company/
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7.9 trillion dollars. That was the historically adjusted market capitalization of the Dutch East India Trading Company. It was a for profit company larger and more powerful than most of history's greatest empires. [1]
If it was around today the world’s first multinational corporation would be worth more than Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and still have more than enough money left over to purchase McDonald’s, Walmart and Samsung.
Most companies are lucky to last ten years. [2]
But The Dutch East India trading company lasted over 200 years, from 1602 until 1799, with an impact that still continues today thanks to its radical business innovations…and *ahem* ‘questionable behaviour’.
But its biggest contribution to the world – besides all the killing and invading and enslaving – are shareholders.
Besides pioneering corporate governance, the creation of shareholders paved the way for modern business to become more accessible to the average person.
This helped popularize employee welfare like health care and pensions, and introduced insurance bonds and joint-stock ownership.
So, who were the people that owned the most valuable company of all time? How did the concept of a corporation even start? And how did the board of investors influence the direction of world history?
- Sources -
https://dutchreview.com/culture/history/how-rich-was-the-dutch-east-india-company/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-16611040
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dutch-East-India-Company
https://www.thoughtco.com/age-of-exploration-1435006
https://www.worldhistory.org/Dutch_East_India_Company/
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/first-company-issue-stock-dutch-east-india.asp
https://investoramnesia.com/2022/10/23/legends-of-market-history-isaac-le-maire/
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/ch2_lemaire.pdf
https://www.worldsfirststockexchange.com/2020/11/27/going-short-in-1608/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/heeren-xvii
https://historyguild.org/the-impacts-of-corporate-globalization-how-the-dutch-east-india-company-changed-the-world/
https://archive.is/SCf9h
https://dokumen.pub/the-worlds-first-stock-exchange-9780231537322.html
https://www.businesscompendium.co.uk/post/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-dutch-east-india-company
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/stock-exchange-history.asp
https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/dirk-hartog/voc-united-dutch-east-india-company
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