"In feudal Europe, a corporation (from the Latin corpus, corporis a body)
was an aggregation of business interests into a single legal body, entity or compact, ...
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usually with an explicit license from city, church, or national leaders. These functioned as effective monopolies for a particular good or labor.
The term "corporation" was used as late as the 18th century in England to refer to such ventures as the East India Company or the Hudson´s Bay Company: commercial organizations that operated under royal patent to have exclusive rights to a particular area of trade. In the medieval town, however, corporations were a conglomeration of interests that existed either as a development from, or in competition with, guilds. The most notable corporations were in trade and banking." - (en.wikipedia.org 14.04.2021)
