ABSTRACT
French trade in Asia operated under the juridical supervision of the French Company which was set up as a legal body by the French Crown. The behaviour of Frenchmen in India, their rights to trade within Asia, as well as to bring goods to Europe, were carefully regulated. Trade between Europe and Asia was the monopoly of the Company; trade inside Asia was under the Company’s authority and the areas, commodities and persons that were permitted in Asian trade varied from time to time. From the point of view of French merchants in India, the Company was important because its system of law, its protection and its port cities formed the umbrella under which the merchant went out to trade in Asia. To understand the trade of the French in Asia, therefore, it is necessary to look not only at the Asian trading world but also at the history of the French Company and the legal framework and social assumptions that the French brought with them from Europe. The Company’s own success, or lack of it, was to have important implications for private Asian trade.
