Trading companies established in the 19th century

Swire Group (Chinese: 太古集團) is a highly diversified global conglomerate with its parent company being John Swire & Sons Limited that holds controlling stakes in a range of businesses trading in the UK, USA, Australia, Papua New Guinea, East and West Africa, and across Southeast Asia. The Group's businesses are arranged into groups: property, aviation, beverages and food chain, marine services, and trading and industrial.

The American Trading Company of Borneo was a chartered company formed by Joseph William Torrey, Thomas Bradley Harris and several Chinese investors shortly after the acquisition over a parcel of land in northern Borneo from the Sultanate of Brunei. The first American settlement in the area soon was named "Ellena", although it was abandoned later due to financial difficulties, diseases and riots among the workers.

A. L. Bruce Estates was one of three largest owners of agricultural estates in colonial Nyasaland. Alexander Low Bruce, the son-in-law of David Livingstone, acquired a large estate at Magomero in the Shire Highlands of Nyasaland in 1893, together with two smaller ones. On his death, these estates were to operate as a trust to bring Christianity and Commerce to Central Africa. However his two sons later formed a commercial company which bought the estates from the trust. The company gained a reputation for the harsh exploitation and ill-treatment of its tenants under a labour system known by the African term "thangata", which operated in the plantation cultivation of cotton and tobacco. This exploitation was one of the causes of the 1915 uprising led by John Chilembwe, which resulted in the deaths of three of the company's European employees. After the failure of its own cotton and tobacco plantations, the company forced its tenants to grow tobacco rather than food on their own land and significantly underpaid them. Following almost three decades of losses, the Magomero estate was in poor condition, but the company was able to sell it at a profit between 1949 and 1952 because the government needed land for resettlement of African former tenants evicted from private estates. The company was liquidated in 1959.

Inabata & Co., Ltd. (稲畑産業, Inabata Sangyō) is a specialized trading company and part of the Sumitomo Chemical group. The company's main lines of business include electronic components, housing equipment, chemicals, and plastics.

Sogo shosha (総合商社, sōgō shōsha, or general trading companies) are Japanese wholesale companies that trade in a wide range of products and materials. In addition to acting as intermediaries, sōgō shōsha also engage in logistics, plant development and other services, as well as international resource exploration. Unlike trading companies in other countries, which are generally specialized in certain types of products, sōgō shōsha have extremely diversified business lines, in which respect the business model is unique to Japan.

Itochu Corporation (伊藤忠商事株式会社, previously known as C. Itoh & Co. until 1992) is a Japanese corporation based in Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka and Aoyama, Minato, Tokyo.

The Canada Company was a private British land development company that was established to aid in the colonization of a large part of Upper Canada. It was incorporated by royal charter on August 19, 1826, under the Canada Company Act 1825 (6 Geo. 4. c. 75) of the British parliament, which was given royal assent on June 27, 1825. It was originally formed to acquire and develop Upper Canada's undeveloped clergy reserves and Crown reserves, which the company bought in 1827 for £341,000 ($693,000) from the Province of Upper Canada.

The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 19th century on a business model that was focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the Southern Hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists, who would then have a ready supply of labour: migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners but would have the expectation of one-day buying land with their savings.

The Royal Niger Company was a mercantile company chartered by the British government in the nineteenth century. It was formed in 1879 as the United African Company and renamed to National African Company in 1881 and to Royal Niger Company in 1886. In 1929, the company became part of the United Africa Company, which came under the control of Unilever during the 1930s and continued to exist as a subsidiary of Unilever until 1987, when it was absorbed into the parent company.

The Jaluit Company (German: Jaluit-Gesellschaft) was a German colonial trading company that operated throughout the Western Pacific, mainly specializing in phosphate mining and copra planation. From 1888 to 1906, the company acted as the colonial administrator of the Marshall Islands on behalf of the German Empire.