世界历史上最强大的公司（上）
By Amanda Ruggeri
It was the most powerful multinational corporation the world had ever seen. Founded in 1600, the East India Company’s power stretched across the globe from Cape Horn to China.
这是有史以来最强大的跨国公司。建于1600年的东印度公司，其权力从合恩角蔓延到中国，跨越全球。
The English company was established for trading, with a royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I granting it a monopoly over business with Asia.
这家英国公司以贸易起家，伊丽莎白女王一世的皇家特许状赋予它与亚洲经商的垄断权。
But the Company’s influence went further. It owned the ports of Singapore and Penang and played a major role in developing cities including Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.
公司的影响力远超于此。它拥有新加坡和槟城的港口，在包括孟买、加尔各答和金奈在内的发展中城市发挥主要作用。
It was one of the largest employers in Britain and also hired vast numbers overseas: in India, it ran a military of 260,000 local recruits. It shaped everyday life in England and across Europe, from the tea the English started to drink to the calicoes they took to wearing.
它是英国最大的雇主之一，在海外雇佣了最大量的人手：在印度就拥有26万军队。它塑造了英格兰和整个欧洲的日常生活，英国人开始饮用茶叶到，他们开始穿白棉布，都归功于公司。
Imagine a company with the influence of Google or Amazon, granted a state-sanctioned monopoly and the right to levy taxes abroad – and with MI6 and the army at its disposal.
想想看，一家有着谷歌或亚马逊那样影响力的公司，被国家授予垄断权和海外征税权，有军情六处和自己的部队可供驱使。
From its establishment by royal charter to its ability to raise armies, the East India Company was a product of its time.
皇家特许其成立，有着组建军队的能力，东印度公司不啻是时代的产物。
But many parallels have been drawn with today’s mega-corporations – from early examples of insider trading to the way it responded to booming stock prices with overexpansion and mismanagement.
可今天的超级公司吸取了诸多相似之处，从早期的内幕交易到股价上涨时的过度扩张和管理失当。
“In its financing, structures of governance and business dynamics, the Company was undeniably modern,” writes Nick Robins in his book The Corporation that Changed the World.
尼克-罗宾森在《改变了世界的公司》一书中说：“在融资、治理结构和商业动态方面，东印度公司绝对是现代的。”
Plus, he says, “All corporations will use political as well as economic ends to promote their interests. Today, that’s called lobbying.”
他还说：“所有公司都通过政治和经济手段促进自身利益，今天这被称为游说。”
But what are the parallels with a prestigious job at the 18th Century’s most powerful multinational and one at a cutting-edge corporation today? Were its headquarters as impressive as Facebook’s? Were the perks as good as Google’s? We attempted to find out.
可在18世纪最强大的跨国公司谋一份声誉昭昭工作和在今天的顶尖公司上班有什么共同之处呢？它的总部和脸谱一样富丽堂皇吗？奖金和谷歌一样优厚吗？我们来看一看。
Acing the interview
Like many multinationals today, the East India Company wasn’t just one of the world’s most powerful corporations – it was also one of the most coveted to work for.
和今天的很多跨国公司一样，东印度公司不仅是世界上最强大的公司之一，它也是最令人钦羡的一份工作。
Competition to work at the East India Company was fierce. Most people, of course, were out of the running from the start: “It was overwhelmingly white males – and no women, apart from housekeepers,” says Margaret Makepeace, lead curator of the British Library’s East India Company Records.
去东印度公司工作，竞争很激烈。当然，多数人输在起跑线上。不列颠图书馆东印度公司档案馆馆长玛格丽特-梅克皮斯说：“主要是白人男性，没有女人，除非去做家务。”
Getting a foot in the door was all about who you knew. Even for manual labour jobs in the warehouses you needed a nomination from one of the company directors. (There were 24 directors, chosen from a pool who had at least £2,000 in company stock, elected annually).
想进公司的门全靠关系。就算在仓库里干体力活，也需要公司的某个董事推荐。公司共有24个董事，每年从持有至少2000英镑公司股票的人当中选出。
“Applications for admission always greatly exceeded the number of vacancies. Unsolicited petitions to the Court of Directors were routinely rejected,” writes Makepeace in her book The East India Company’s London Workers.
梅克皮斯在《东印度公司的伦敦工人》一书中说：“求职者远远超过岗位数量。向董事会毛遂自荐一般会被拒绝。”
If you wanted to be a clerk, or ‘writer’, at the headquarters in London you would also have to be nominated. Again, who you knew was paramount: “Success was ultimately dependent upon connection and influence rather than the possession of any skills and aptitude for the post,” writes Huw Bowen in his book Business of Empire.
想在伦敦的总部当个文员或“秘书”，也必须有人推荐。这还得看关系：“成功主要看你的关系和影响力，而非拥有什么技能和是否适合这个岗位。”胡-伯恩在《帝国的商业》一书中写道。
Unpaid internships
You didn’t just need a personal introduction to be in with a chance of a job – you also needed to pay.
你不仅需要人引荐，你还需要掏腰包。
First, to guarantee good behaviour, every worker had to post a bond. A new hire could expect to put down £500. In terms of what you could buy, that’s equivalent to some £36,050 ($51,800) today.
首先，为确保品行良好，每个工人要缴纳保证金，新员工要被扣押500英镑。用现在的物价计算，相当于36050英镑。
The higher the position and salary, the higher the bond: even as early as the 1680s the president of an overseas factory had to sign a bond for £5,000 (about £360,500).
职位和薪金越高，保证金越高，在十七世纪八十年代，一个海外工厂的总裁甚至必须缴纳5000英镑保证金，相当于现在360500英镑。
Today, working for free, or even paying to work, has come under fire. for unpaid internships, while the of internships for thousands of dollars is a fixture of the fashion industry.
今天，无偿工作甚至付钱工作饱受谴责，康泰纳仕是因为不给实习生付钱而被起诉的几家媒体公司之一，在时尚业中，数千美元竞拍实习生是惯例。
At the East India Company, too, your career would start with an unpaid ‘probationary’ period — a five-year stint, shaved down to three in 1778. Only near the end of the century did a token amount of around £10 (£12,350 today) start to be paid out each year.
在东印度公司，职业生涯起步从无偿的“试用期”开始，试用期长达五年，到1778年才减少到三年。直到那个世纪末，才开始每年象征性地支付10英镑薪水。
Between the bonds and the probation, few other than the well-heeled could nab one of the Company’s white-collar jobs.
试用期内，除非家资丰厚，罕有人成为公司白领。
Training modules
By 1800, even the East India Company saw that selecting employees based mainly on patronage wasn’t necessarily the best way to run a proto-empire. Their solution was a kind of ‘employee boot camp’.
到1800年，连东印度公司都发现靠关系招募雇员不一定是运作这个帝国公司的最好方法。他们的解决方案是某种“员工训练营”。
In 1806, the Company opened the East India College, a 60-acre estate in Haileybury, designed by architect William Wilkins, to train new clerks. On the curriculum: history, the classics, law – and Hindustani, Sanskrit, Persian and Telugu. Closed down in 1858 but later reopened, it’s known as the today.
1806年，公司开立东印度学院，这是建筑师威廉-威尔金斯设计，在凯雷伯里占地60英亩的建筑，用来训练新员工。其课程表包括历史、古典学、法律和印度斯坦语、梵语、波斯语和泰卢固语。
Welcome to HQ
Facebook’s new 430,000sqft, Frank Gehry-designed headquarters in Menlo Park, California has the world’s biggest open-floor plan and a nine-acre green roof; Google’s campus has a bowling alley and seven fitness centres.
脸谱在加州门罗公园由弗兰克-盖里设计的占地43万平方英尺的总部有世界上最大的开放式隔间和9英亩的屋顶绿地。谷歌园区有保龄球道和七个健身中心。
The East India Company’s headquarters in London may not have had a roof deck or sculpture garden, but its directors wanted to show that they were stylish and impressive.
东印度公司在伦敦的总部可能没有屋顶平台或室内花园，其董事们也要显示他们时髦阔绰。
When the building was rebuilt in the 1790s, neoclassicism was all the rage, and the building came complete with a six-column portico. The tympanum – a decorative wall over the entrance - showed King George III defending the commerce of the East – an 18th-Century exercise in corporate branding.
十八世纪九十年代重建时，新古典主义正当其时，因此建筑有六柱门廊。入口处的装饰墙——鼓室上展示了乔治三世捍卫东印度公司生意，这是18世纪的公司品牌。
Inside, the headquarters were just as extraordinary. The courtroom had a marble bas-relief of Britannia surrounded by India, Asia and Africa and doors panelled with pictures of far-flung Company ports like Bombay and the Cape.
总部的内部也非同凡响。大堂中是一座大理石浮雕，印度、亚洲、非洲环绕着不列颠，格板门上是公司遥远的港口画面，有孟买、合恩角。
Marble statues of British officers in Roman togas watched over one of the sale rooms. Spoils from war — including the bullet-ridden silk standards, and jewel-encrusted gold throne of the Sultan of Mysore Tipu — were on display in the headquarters’ museum.
穿罗马宽袍的英国官员大理石雕像环视着某个交易间。总部博物馆中陈列着战利品，包括弹眼累累的丝质文件，老虎吞噬欧洲造型的管风琴和迈索尔帝普苏丹镶满珠宝的金冠。
The warehouses, far from rough-and-tumble storage spaces, were elegant and stylish buildings that dominated the City of London. “The Company intended to impress Londoners by using the warehouse buildings as well as East India House to be its public ‘face’,” writes Makepeace.
仓库可不是那种粗放的储藏室，它堪称冠绝伦敦金融城的优雅时尚建筑。梅克皮斯写道：“公司把仓库和东印度公司总部打造成其公众脸面，让伦敦人叹服。”
On-site sleepovers
Some modern companies offer their employees nap rooms; the East India Company went further. Before the 1790s when it was at the Craven House, located on Leadenhall Street and Lime Street in the City of London, some workers lived there with their families — a few for free.
一些现代公司给员工提供午休房：东印度公司更甚。十八世纪九十年代以前，在伦敦城利德贺街和莱姆街的克雷文宫为部分工人和家人提供了住所，有些是免费的。
And if corporations today have found that their , so did employees then.
如果今天的公司发现工人滥用打盹特权，那时的员工也一样。
One housekeeper who pushed his luck in 1680 was forced to turn out his son-in-law – though his wife, daughter, grand-child and maid were allowed to remain.
一个得寸进尺的管家被迫把他的女婿轰出去，尽管妻子、女儿、外孙和婢女还可以住下来。
Clerks who worked for the Company abroad also lived ‘at work’, in factories. This was more about control than anything else: the depots were set up like monasteries or Oxford colleges, and workers slept, ate and prayed under the eye of their superiors. Discipline could be strict.
在海外为公司工作的人也住在工厂里。这主要为了好管理：驿站修得像修道院或牛津大学，工人在领导的眼皮底下吃、住、起到，管得很严。
“If any be drunk or abuse the natives, they are to be set at the gate in irons all the daytime, and all the night to be tied to a post in the house,” warned one Company decree in the late 17th Century.
“有人酗酒或虐待当地人，白天会被所在门里，晚上被拴在一个杆上。”17世纪末公司如是规定。
Still, some of the compounds had features not entirely unlike today’s start-up firms. The English factory at Hirado had an orchard, garden with a koi-filled pond and a Japanese-style hot bath. In Surat, there was a chapel, library and hammam (Turkish bath).
有的建筑和今天的初创公司差不了多少。英国在日本平户的工厂有个果园，园中有池，池中有锦鲤，还有日式温泉。在印度苏拉特，则有小礼拜堂、图书馆和土耳其浴池。
Meal ticket
The East India Company had other on-site perks, too — like food. Until expenses were cut in 1834, clerks at the London headquarters were given a free breakfast when they arrived early. (One enthusiastic practitioner: philosopher John Stuart Mill).
东印度公司还有其他福利，例如伙食。1834年削减经费前，伦敦总部的工作人员每天可以享用免费早餐。哲学家穆勒就是个热心的蹭饭者。
At the factories abroad, where meals were provided, the free food was nothing to scoff at. One visitor in 1689, the English priest John Ovington, remarked that the Surat factory employed one English, one Portuguese and one Indian cook – just so there would be recipes to everyone’s taste.
海外工厂提供三餐，免费食物还别瞧不上，1689年的一个访客、英国牧师约翰-欧灵敦说，苏拉特工厂雇佣了一个英国厨师、一个葡萄牙厨师和一个印度厨师，做符合不同人口味的菜品。
Meals included pilau, raisin and almond-stuffed fowl, spit-roasted beef and plenty of wine and arrack (liquor from fermented coco palm sap).
有盖浇饭、葡萄杏仁鸡、叉烧牛肉、各式红酒和亚丽酒。
On Sundays and holidays, that menu could swell to 16 courses and include peacocks, hares, venison and “Persian fruits” like pistachios, apricots and cherries.
周日和节假日里，菜谱将增加到16道主菜，包括孔雀、野兔、鹿肉和开心果、大杏仁、车厘子等“波斯水果”。
“Several hundreds a Year are expended upon their daily Provisions which are sumptuous enough for the Entertainment of any Person of Eminence,” Ovington wrote admiringly.
“每天的伙食一年要几百磅，其丰盛足以让任何有头有脸的人满意。”欧灵敦钦羡地写道。
Open bar
Today’s employees might envy Dropbox’s “whiskey Fridays” or Facebook’s cocktail hours. But with ample alcohol at lunch and dinner, the East India Company’s factories abroad took things a lot further.
今天的雇员可能羡慕Dropbox的“威士忌周五”或脸谱的鸡尾酒时间。东印度公司的海外工厂更厉害，午餐和晚餐上酒随便喝。
In one year at a factory in Sumatra, the 19 workers consumed “74.5 dozen bottles of wine, 50 dozen of French claret, 24.5 dozen of Burton Ale, 2 pipes and 42 gallons of Madeira, 274 bottles of Toddy and 164 gallons of Goa arrack”.
有一年在苏门达拉的一家工厂中，19个工人喝了“74.5打红酒，50打法国红酒和24.5打伯顿麦芽酒、2桶外加42加仑马德拉酒、274平棕榈酒喝164加仑羚羊亚丽酒。”
On receiving the receipts, the Company wrote back: “It is a wonder that any of you live six months to an end, or that there are not more quarrellings and duellings among you, if half the liquors he charges were really guzzled down.”
看到收据后，公司写信回复：“就算只是其中一半的酒被豪饮掉，你们竟然可以没有发生争吵和决斗，还有人能活过六个月，这简直令人惊奇。”
In London, however, the closest to the East India Company came to an on-site bar was its workers-only pub in the company’s shipyard — leased on the condition that the beer couldn’t be sold for any more than three pints of ale for a penny, about £0.43 today ($0.63).
然而，在伦敦，东印度公司的员工到公司船坞的内部酒吧，开酒吧的条件是三品脱麦芽酒不能超过一便士，相当于今天0.43镑。