ABSTRACT
The nature of the relationship between the state-controlled Company and private interests has already been indicated. The crown wished the Company to run all operations associated with foreign trade with Asia, but financial weakness made it repeatedly necessary for the Company to rid itself of some of its activities which it could no longer support. Between 1719 and 1722 the Company maintained its monopoly on country trade; after 1722 private trade was permitted east of the Cape of Good Hope and the Company only participated as one of the shareholders in a partnership. The Company’s Asian trade is relatively easy to assess; its profits and losses were reported regularly to Paris and can be identified on certain routes, at certain dates; private trade is a much more elusive activity. After 1722 almost all members of the French community in India took part in it, but they were secret sharers; the official purpose of all except a few free merchants was the affairs of the Company. The servants did not wish to give their masters in France the impression of too great a prosperity. 1 For the Company, country trade was a sideline to their main enterprise and one which was not always profitable; for its employees and the free merchants, country trade was their livelihood and their hope of a fortune. For them, Company participation was essential. 72Company and private interests were inextricably enmeshed in local trade. The governor and councillors at Pondicherry ran the Company’s Asian trade and their own as one operation, going into partnership as representatives of the Company with themselves in their private capacities. They formed partnerships for the ownership of vessels and their cargoes, bought goods from and sold them to the Company (sometimes under Indian names), supplied the French settlements and the European ships and depended on the help, very often unpaid, of the Company’s servants in ports all over Asia. They disguised their personal interest where they could in their correspondence with Paris, for the directors were always suspicious of the conflict of interests that undoubtedly existed.
