ABSTRACT
The French Company’s entry into Asian trade in 1719 was made because it wished both to make money in what seemed a profitable area of commerce for European trading companies and ‘pour la gloire de l’état’, to rival the Dutch and English in an important arena of national prowess. For the private traders whom the Company was obliged to take into partnership the matter was much simpler: they wished, like La Bourdonnais, to make their fortunes. The relationship that was born out of their mutual needs was profitable only for the private traders. It allowed French country trade to take root, for, without the seed corn of the Company’s support and investment, it is doubtful whether the private traders would have long survived. For the Company itself, country trade made only losses. By 1748 the confident predictions and calculations with which the French had begun in 1719 had been nullified. The deterioration of trade in the all-important markets of west Asia made profits for the Company and fortunes for the servants and their French investors harder to achieve, especially from the 1730s onwards. The difficulties faced by Indian merchants on Coromandel largely frustrated French attempts to find Indian partners for their Asian trade. Indian merchant communities either altogether avoided too close a contact with Europeans or remained loyal to those enclaves, such as Madras and Calcutta, that had proved themselves successful and profitable bases in the more prosperous past. In this context French capital, from both Company and private French sources, was all the more important to French country traders.
