Abstract
The work of Marie Ménard Jacob investigates the first French East India Company (1664–1704), whose history has long been overshadowed by that of the great French East India Company of the eighteenth century (1723–1769). However, the first company played a key role in laying the foundations of the French presence in Asia and is thus well worthy of attention. The author chooses to study the history of the company by focusing on the Indian factories, especially on the action and experience of the company’s agents as emigrants in a foreign country.
The first French East India Company was first of all a political project whose aim was to assert the presence of France in the Indian Ocean, where the national fleet did not sail. It was a state administration founded and managed originally by Colbert, the main minister of Louis XIV. The capital came mainly from the financial world linked to the royal court and not from the merchants. The beginning of the company entailed a great deal of improvisation. In 1664 it obtained the monopoly of navigation to Asia, but the captains and sailors did not have any knowledge about the shipping routes, and nor did they have adequate vessels or knowledge of places to make stopovers. Madagascar was first chosen to be the point of support for the company in the Indian Ocean, but the island was two months’ sailing from the Indian coast and was thus not suitable, and after three years of difficulties it became necessary to settle on the Indian subcontinent, where the factory of Pondicherry became the main centre of the company. This improvisation is also seen in the recruitment of agents, who did not receive any specific instructions before leaving for Asia. In addition, and very quickly, the running of the factories suffered from the failure of the communication network between France and India. The agents had no access to information concerning business in Europe (wars, political changes) or even news about their own situation, such as the arrival dates of ships. Thus, they lived off rumours in an anxiety-provoking atmosphere. Moreover, they were not prepared for everyday life in the factories, which was very hard due to the climatic conditions which caused high mortality. Most employees had a strong desire to return to France.
Thus, from its foundation, the company had neither the agents nor the skills to settle in India. Local business practices were unknown, and the employees did not know anything about Indian customs. Individuals such as Armenian merchants or Indian brokers helped by putting their skills at the service of the company in order to develop trade. However, little by little, the French employees learned the trade and Indian customs, without any help or control from the home country. This debilitating lack of coordination between the Paris headquarters and Indian factories did not help the company to assert its presence facing local authorities. In India you had to pay to be allowed to trade, to transport goods to ports, to ship out of the harbour and you had to know how to maintain good relations by giving gifts and gratuities. All this was difficult because, firstly, the company had little money and, secondly, had to adapt to a difficult geopolitical context. For the French settled in India, war was a permanent condition. The first Indian company had to endure a multitude of local wars between Indian principalities, as well as three major European conflicts. In Asia, France had to live in the shadow of the VOC, the powerful Dutch company that did everything it could to stand in the way of its competitors’ trade, and especially that of the French Catholics. To counter this the French approached the Portuguese, but neither country really received the help they sought from the other. As for the British East India Company, it fully understood the weakness of France in India and showed goodwill towards the French company so as to counteract Dutch power, despite the mutual animosity between the two countries in Europe. In India the English were the official allies and the unofficial enemies were the Dutch.
Whereas the ambition of the company was to replace the VOC on the Asian routes, the military results of the actions of the French squadrons in Asia were poor. The means were too limited to be able to launch decisive actions, and the victories were merely anecdotic events which, even if they momentarily spread panic, did not change the balance of power in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, due to the difficulty of getting supplies, the squadrons could only remain a very short time in Asia. The company had no dry-dock or wintering facilities to support the operation of warships. In addition, the arrival of the King’s officers in the factories in order to assure their safety caused animosity with the agents of the company. The army saw India as a territory to defend or even to subjugate, whereas the merchants saw it as a territory to be exploited and a place to live. Finally, the war of Spanish Succession put an end to this first French experience in India. In Brittany, Lorient, the port of departure of the ships to Asia, passed into the hands of the Navy and the trade with India disappeared.
The first company was a financial failure. This was due to the total lack of knowledge about the political context and the practice of Indian traders by the company officers, as well as the absence of real links between the metropolis and its factories. However, the company did leave a legacy to the successors that emerged in the eighteenth century. It had established the routes by a greater understanding of space and time, organised factories that would survive it and identified goods to buy for the markets it wanted to satisfy. Pondicherry, even if its port infrastructure was underdeveloped and its harbour difficult to access, was to remain the great French factory in India. Finally, the agents sent out to the factories gave birth to a French community which organised itself within Indian society. The originality of Marie Ménard Jacob’s study lies in its close study of the factories and those who established and manned them, and this is a contribution of importance to the knowledge of the history of commercial relations between France and the Asian region in modern times.