TOTAL WAR WIKI

Global Trading Company
Category:	Port - Trade
Level:	3
Turns to build:	5
Building cost:	10000
European Indian Middle Eastern
Requires
Commercial Basin
Technology
Free Trade Doctrine

A massive enterprise controlling a nation’s trade to one part of the globe, or in certain commodities.

Trading companies can be enormous, with fleets of armed merchant ships carrying all manner of cargoes. The successors to the medieval merchant adventurers, they generate fantastic wealth from their operations. Usually granted a government monopoly in either a geographic area or in a set of trade goods, the companies can also act as a privatised diplomatic service in distant corners of the globe. They are known to do deal with local potentates for trade concessions, military access, tax farming and they have taken over native governments by imposing their “advisors”.

Historically, the great East India companies of Britain, France and the Netherlands were armed, quasi-independent mercantile mini-states. The British East India Company was wealthy almost beyond imagining: its trade represented about one-sixth of the British national income. Like the French “Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales” and Dutch “Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie”, the “John Company” had its own fleet and army. In India it fought wars and had its own foreign policy, giving the British government little choice but to support its actions. In modern times only petrochemical, mining and arms companies have commanded comparable power over nations.

This building can only be built in the home region of the faction.