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The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India is a book by historian Philip J. Stern about the East India Company. The book studies the political and intellectual history of the Company, focusing on the century preceding 1757, when Company forces won the Battle of Plassey and began its takeover of Bengal. Stern argues against the traditional view that the Company suddenly transformed from mercantile corporation into a territorial power in the mid-eighteenth century. Instead, he argues that the Company combined forms of sovereignty with commerce long before it acquired extensive territories, and that the development of this particular form of organization—the Company-State—laid the basis for the British Empire in India.