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statementVerified

WN prints the East India Company as a sovereign-company hybrid

Dated 11 March 1776: WN prints the East India Company as a sovereign-company hybrid. In the causal graph this event strengthens Institutional Corruption, a driver that strengthens Political corruption index — a worsening welfare path.

Read the full account

Gutenberg WN pages on the Company print a public critique of a militarised monopoly. Twin improving: the critique itself as transparency. This stores the printed company-state as an extraction machine he described, not as a company he directed. Adam Smith did not operate this later page as a civil-registry autograph.

Context

Shared institutions, unnamed crews, and later editors remain in the record and do not erase a documented heading.

Adam Smith Shared work with other named actors remains in the record.

Adam Smith’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below.

Conventional years are 1723–1790.

Who was responsible

Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.

  • Adam Smith

    Person

    Direct responsibility

    responsibility level 0.4 · verified

What changed

Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.

    1. FactWN prints the East India Company as a sovereign-company hybrid
    2. strengthensDriverInstitutional Corruption
    3. strengthensIndicators (3)Political corruption index
    Worsening path

    impact weight 0.5 · Effect from 11 March 1776 · verified

    Gutenberg WN pages on the Company print a public critique of a militarised monopoly.

Evidence

The sources behind this fact and its verification state.

Verified2 sources on file
  1. 1.Britannica — Adam SmithEncyclopaedia Britannica · High credibility · verified
  2. 2.An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — public EnglishProject Gutenberg · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish

Driver institutional-corruption is attached because the Significance sentence names a mechanism from WN prints the East India Company as a sovereign-company hybrid at 1776-03-11, not because a standing driver list needed coverage. Official page: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 (opens in a new tab). Independent page: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adam-Smith (opens in a new tab).

Causal path

How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.

  1. ActorAdam Smith
  2. contributed toFactWN prints the East India Company as a sovereign-company hybrid
  3. strengthensDriverInstitutional Corruption
  4. strengthensIndicatorPolitical corruption index

Cite this page

Factrail. (2026). WN prints the East India Company as a sovereign-company hybrid. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/asm-east-india-company

https://factrail.ai/facts/asm-east-india-company

Accessed 16 October 2026.

By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed

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