Edmond Smith, "Merchants: The Community That Shaped England's Trade and Empire, 1550-1650" (Yale UP, 2021)
New Books in World Affairs
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What Is the Generality?
The generality is something that would number, potentially into the hundreds of individuals for some of the larger companies. And during general courts, when the whole company would come together, often in the house of one of the senior merchants in london or elsewhere,. The generality had quite a significant say over how these organizations should be run. i think that's a really import thing to remember, that these corporations, although they had their governors and directors sort of at the top in making orders, these were responding to a generality who actually hadquite a significant say on what was happening.
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