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This paper analyzes the ownership and governance of the business corporations of New York State in the 1820s. Using a new dataset collected from the manuscript records of New York's 1823 capital tax, and from the charters of the corporations, I analyze the ownership structures of the firms, and investigate the degree to which ownership was separated from control at the time. In contrast to Berle and Means's account of the development of the corporation, the results indicate that many of the firms were dominated by large shareholders, who were represented on the firms' boards, and held sweeping power to utilize the firms' resources for their own benefit. The oppression of minority shareholders was a significant problem in early corporate governance, and many of the firms configured their voting rights in a way that curtailed the power of large investors. A positive relationship between firm value and these voting rights configurations is found among the publicly-traded firms in the sample.

This Article presents new evidence on the evolution of the business corporation in America and on the emergence of what is commonly termed the "Berle and Means corporation." Drawing on a wide range of sources, I investigate three major historical claims of The Modern Corporation: that large corporations had displaced small ones by the early twentieth century; that the quasi-public corporations of the 1930s were much larger than the public corporations of the nineteenth century; and that ownership was separated from control to a much greater extent in the 1930s compared to the nineteenth century. I address each of these claims with new data and present analyses of nineteenth century corporations that mirror Berle and Means's analysis of the corporations of the 1930s. The conclusions I draw from these analyses revise the historical claims of The Modern Corporation in important ways.

This article presents a critical survey of ten books from the history of capitalism, a newly emerging subfield of history. At their best, the books offer provocative insights and vivid descriptions of some of the darker episodes of our economic past. Yet specious arguments and failures of analytical reasoning sometimes undermine these books' effectiveness as social criticism. I highlight insights from the field of economic history that would strengthen the work of historians of capitalism. I also suggest some opportunities for dialogue, if not collaboration, between the two communities of scholars.