The company-microstate:the Auckland Islands and corporate colonialism in global history, 1849-52

• Published in: Journal of Global History
• Main Author: Howitt, Rohan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Auckland Islands; Company-state; corporation; empire; globalization; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/708f22f6-09f9-4390-b7fd-4f4a86f24ca7; https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022823000128; https://researchmgt.monash.edu/ws/files/581418148/484429308_oa.pdf; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85165930523&partnerID=8YFLogxK

The Auckland Islands, a subantarctic archipelago 465 kilometres south of New Zealand, were the setting for one of the stranger episodes in the global history of colonial expansion. From 1849-52, these remote, inhospitable islands were governed and settled by a chartered company. The project was driven by lofty ambitions to simultaneously create a flourishing settler colony and unlock vast new whaling grounds in the Southern Ocean; the reality was a commercial disaster plagued by bitter internal disputes and a speedy abandonment. Drawing on the methods of global microhistory, I argue that the colonization of the Auckland Islands was a pivotal moment in the integration of the Southern Ocean world into global processes of governance, mobility, and trade. This anomalous case contributes to recent scholarship on 'company-states' and the central role of such hybrid polities in processes of cross-regional interaction and globalization.