History of monopoly
The original meaning of the word monopoly comes from Greek as a compound of two words: "mono", which means "single" or "one", and "polein", meaning "to sell". This word was defined as an exclusive legal right of sale covered by government usually ensured by patent or license. In the seventeenth century, monopoly was defined by Sir Edward Coke as an "allowance by the King to any person or corporate for the sole buying, selling, making, working or using anything, whereby any person or corporate are sought to be restrained of any freedom or liberty that they had before." In the eighteenth century, monopoly was defined by Samuel Johnson as the "exclusive privilege of selling anything." In the course of time monopoly has come to be interpreted as a private accumulation of economic power or an entity that has total or near-total control of a market."
England
Monopolies became socially significant for the first time in the early seventeenth century in England under the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, who sold monopolistic licenses for their own enrichment. The result was a significant increase of prices in particular industries accompanied by forcing non-licensed suppliers not to produce, often under threat of strict punishments for patent infringement. A long disputation about the efficiency of royal grants of monopoly privileges finally led, with the contribution, among others, of the Darcy v. Allen case and Sir Edward Coke, to royal rights to provide licenses being strictly restrained. The undesirable effects of diminishing social wealth were discussed and a new theory of monopolies was created.
Colonial America
Although most aspects of British law were the same in British colonies, laws on monopoly were less clearly defined in America. Therefore, new specific versions of both patents for economic development and restrictions on the issuance of patents were enacted. For example, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties from 1641 declared that no monopolies are acceptable except for new inventions that are profitable to the country. While leaders of American colonies began to issue amendments to the law in the form of charters and relations with Britain continued to deteriorate, constantly emitted monopolies on England's suppliers became a direct cause of Americans' indignation. When England enacted a set of laws enabling domestic merchants of many branches to sell with monopoly in British colonies, colonists protested and created black markets. One well-known protest was the Boston Tea Party, whose main impetus was the British government and East India Company owning a monopoly over tea imports. Continuous efforts to discredit Americans to compete in foreign markets and to secure benefits associated with it led to the American Revolution and the consequent creation of the United States.
Post-industrial monopoly
The process of creating powerful private monopolistic corporates fulfilling a definition of modern monopoly according to its economic position and market power are mostly connected with second half of nineteenth and twentieth century in United States. Public concerns about the state-granted monopolies shifted to fear of private ones. Several of the emerging economic giants such as Standard Oil or Carnegie Steel Company had become so influential on the market that the American government had to create new section of antitrust laws to prevent from diminishing social wealth. Most important laws of that time are the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914. Many state constitutions have been modified to meet current monopoly requirements, for example Minnesota Constitution stated in 1888: "Any combination of persons, either as individuals or members or officers of any corporation to monopolize the markets for food products in this state, or to interfere with, or to restrict the freedom of such markets, is hereby declared to be a criminal conspiracy and shall be punished in such manner as the Legislature shall provide.'' Within this period both monopolies and government antitrust laws have been modified and spread into the whole world even more with trend of globalization. Corporates are consistently observed currently to comply with antitrust measures because the extended modern economic theory proved that an uncontrolled monopoly diminish public wealth.