The most interesting thing about these long lasting companies is how their governance changes over time considering how different society is from when they were originally founded. Countries have come and gone within the lifetime of these companies. There have been entire paradigm shifts in terms of how companies operate. And yet they still exist through it all.
It looks like most of this centuries-long companies are family owned which sort of explains why do they survive all sorts of extreme political and economic changes that would otherwise break most companies. But it would be interesting to see if there's an actual study to explain this.
Being family owned is still impressive. The founder of the company probably has many thousands of heir today so how the company lived without being split between heirs is surprising.
I wonder how many of these were considered semi benevolent either during their entire life span or lucky or wise enough to do so during times of turmoil.
Some stores will have people willing to stick their neck out to defend them during riots. Some have good insurance and don’t care. Which ones get obliterated when the pitchforks and torches come out?
Depends entirely on how you define the parameters of the question. Egypt has been around for a very long time, but is the ~3000BC Egypt the same country as the 2024 Egypt? Did Egypt stop being Egypt during the period of Roman rule? What about during Macedonian rule? Did people 5000 years ago even have a concept of a “country” that would align with what we think makes a country in 2024? Do people in 2024 even have an agreed upon concept of what a country is today? (I would say evidently not) Does the country of ancient Persia still exist? If it’s longest contiguous self-sovereignty then probably Japan would be pretty high up the list. If its longest surviving constitution, then the USA and San Marino would also be two of the oldest countries in the world. But is San Marino even a country? Certainly not by every single metric you could possibly use to define one. Is the Magna Carta still in effect? Some of it is, but is that enough to make it the oldest surviving constitution?
To make the question meaningful you probably have to make it a lot more specific. Otherwise the answer is just a debate about what constitutes a country, and what constitutes it coming into and out of existence.
