These maps show the oldest companies in the world

At a time when the typical firm on the S&P 500 solely survives for two decades, it’s stunning to see that there are firms which have existed for hundreds of years world wide.

A collection of maps revealed by the British publication Business Financing lays out the oldest firms nonetheless in existence in every nation. The group performed its personal analysis and didn’t work with any skilled historians or tutorial establishments, so take their findings with a grain of salt. 

However within the broadest sense, they provide a glimpse into the industries that helped form every nation’s financial system. In lots of instances, in addition they reveal the darker facets of historical past, as nations accrued wealth by way of slavery and colonialism.

The oldest firm nonetheless working at present is in Japan. It’s a development agency known as Kongo Gumi that dates to 578 and has specialised in constructing temples for 14 centuries. As we speak, although the corporate has been purchased by a development conglomerate, temples nonetheless account for 80% of its business.

Most of the oldest firms in Europe relate to conventional merchandise that mirror a nation’s tradition. 

There are various previous food and drinks firms in central Europe, for instance. The oldest firm within the continent is the Staffelter Hof Vineyard in Germany, which dates again to 862. 

In Eire, the oldest firm, Sean’s Bar, was based in 900. Within the Netherlands, Model Brewery dates again to 1340. In Austria, the oldest firm is a restaurant known as St. Peter Stifskulinarium, which serves native meals together with beer from a close-by monastery.

In america, the oldest firm nonetheless working is the Shirley Plantation in Virginia, shaped in 1613. The farm grew tobacco, which was then shipped all through the colonies and to Europe, and it was maintained by way of slave labor.

Colonialism is abundantly evident elsewhere within the maps, too. In Congo, for instance, the oldest firm dates again to 1889, when the nation was below Belgian rule. It’s a railway firm that also bears a French identify—Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer du Congo—and is at present owned by the federal government of Congo. 

In Barbados, the oldest surviving firm is Mount Homosexual Rum, which additionally occurs to be the world’s oldest rum maker, based in 1703. Barbados was a rich British sugar colony and a hub of the African slave commerce, so the sugarcane juice used within the manufacturing of the rum largely got here from plantations that relied on slave labor. Slavery was solely outlawed within the nation in 1807.

For essentially the most half, the oldest firms in colonized lands are banks, railways, and publish workplaces that had been first established by colonial administrations to create an infrastructure that might higher serve the colonizers’ financial wants. It was a lot simpler for colonizers to export treasured sources comparable to sugar, oil, or cotton again to Europe after they had functioning postal networks, transportation techniques, and monetary establishments. Later, when colonized international locations gained independence, these firms had been taken over by the newly unbiased governments in every nation.

These maps present an intriguing take a look at the businesses which have managed to face the take a look at of time. However the maps additionally inform a narrative of how, for hundreds of years, treasured sources—together with people—had been forcibly taken from some elements of the world and exported into others.