First, to be commercially successful, the company-states had to have enough autonomy from their chartering home states to focus on commercial success, including the use of violence in achieving this end, rather than being subordinated into unprofitable strategic missions at the behest of rulers. Without this autonomy, company-states tended to fall into a vicious circle. A lack of autonomy meant that they were used as instruments of rulers’ geopolitical and military aims, which meant that the companies were commercially unviable, which made them more financially dependent on rulers, who were then even more likely to use company-states as instruments of national policy in loss-making missions.