Interesting, especially considering that Sweden didn’t have limited liability companies until 1st of January 1849 [1]. Any ideas how this worked?
1. https://www.foretagskallan.se/foretagskallan-nyheter/lektion...
Legal personhood dates back to (at least) Ancient Rome:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
Medieval guilds, city charters, universities were all forms of such. Liability would be implicitly included in such structures.
The UK law formalizing the structure of LLCs didn't really come around until the 1800s. Think of how many institutions in the UK are older than that (e.g., Bank of England is from 1694).
Or for something that is a little more distinct from the government itself--Hudson's Bay Company in Canada was formed in 1670. Canada didn't exist yet and the laws weren't on the books. It was created by royal charter. It's currently owned by an American private investment firm.
So effectively we used to have the death penalty for companies that committed treason-adjacent acts, or killed customers.
I think even back then the kings were losing power to the governments that ruled in their name.
It's also interesting to note that some of Europe's colonizing was actually done by companies which had armies, and definitely killed at least some of their customers (whether you think the customers were the colonizers or the colonized).