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This paper focuses on employers in the “colonial moment”. Until recently, historiography used the term “colonial employers” in opposition to “metropolitan” employers to define the corporate heads involved in overseas markets. This general term masks the diversity of business situations and practices. Who were these employers? A rapid survey shows a complex world where the qualifier, “colonial”, leads to more misunderstanding than to understanding. With the emerging imperial history movement and the debates it sparks, we suggest using the imperial scale to work out a typology that would better grasp this diversity and employer strategies within the framework of the first globalization resulting from colonial empires.