Adventure capital was a phenomenon that had taken hold long before the 1600s. One group, the Fellowship of the Merchants Adventurers of England, had been formally recognized as far back as 1505. Rather than act as a formal pool of money or resources, the adventurers had always been a loosely affiliated guild in which individual members participated in the ventures of their choosing. As the century progressed, the capital requirements of overseas ventures had coincided with and propelled development of the joint-stock company—“joint-stock” implying shareholders with transferable interests as opposed to the more intimate, closed nature of partnerships.
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