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The French East India Company

The chartered French corporation created by Louis XIV in August 1664 on Colbert's design, holding a fifty year monopoly of French navigation and trade from the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Magellan with establishments at Surat, Pondicherry, Chandernagore and Ile Bourbon, whose protective passes were the substance of William Kidd's defence and whose colony at Ile Bourbon regulated the retirement of pirates by amnesty.

FromAugust 1664ToNot establishedAlso writtenCompagnie des Indes orientales

The Compagnie des Indes orientales was Louis XIV's chartered corporation for the trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope, created by royal declaration in August 1664, conventionally 27 August, registered by the Parlement of Paris on 1 September. Jean-Baptiste Colbert framed it to break Dutch and English dominance of the Asian trades. The privilege was a fifty year monopoly of French navigation and trade from the Cape eastward to the Strait of Magellan, carrying a delegated sovereignty: territory, justice, coinage and armed force.1

Its eastern establishments were Surat, Pondicherry, Chandernagore and Ile Bourbon. It is distinct from the French crown, whose squadron acted against pirates at Bourbon in 1696, and from the French Indies Company of March 1723.

Governance and money

Against a nominal capital of fifteen million livres tournois, the usual figure for the sum raised is just over eight million, three million of it royal. Elisabeth Heijmans reads the reorganisations of 1685 and 1702 as informal bankruptcies effected by forced capital increases. In 1708 the directors are said to have asked leave to fail, the naval minister refusing and licensing private traders instead.2

The French passes

A French pass placed a vessel, whoever owned her, under French crown protection, Indian and Armenian freighters at Surat seeking them as insurance against French cruisers; it thereby made its bearer look like French property. William Kidd sailed under an Admiralty commission against the king's enemies, France among them, and a Great Seal patent of 26 January 1696 to take pirates. When he took the Rupparell and then the Quedagh Merchant, the passes aboard were the whole of his case for lawful prize.3

The pass itself settles who granted it: Francois Martin, directeur general of the Company in Bengal and Coromandel, issued it at the Hooghly factory on 14 January 1698, the same month as the capture. The older accounts that put it at Pondicherry, which the Dutch held from September 1693 until September 1699, do not survive a reading of the document.

The passes were not produced when Kidd was tried in London in May 1701, and he claimed that Bellomont had withheld them. They were later found in a Colonial Office volume now at The National Archives, Kew, as CO 5/860, covering 1698 to 1699. The rediscovery among the Board of Trade papers is dated 1910 on the Archive's record of the passes, 1911 being the year Ralph Paine's photographic facsimile publicised the find; the date rests on secondary assertion.4

Bourbon and the amnesties

At Ile Bourbon the Company's official position was that pirates were fit for the rope; its practical position, with guns fit chiefly for saluting visitors, was to conciliate them. Captain Congdon and his 135 men were offered the rights of an inhabitant for surrendering their arms, renouncing their disorder for ever and keeping faith with the king of France. The same terms were put to Olivier Levasseur, called La Buse, and restated on 23 September 1724 by the island's Conseil superieur, established five days earlier under a royal edict of 1723 and not a Company body; his crew surrendered and he did not.5

Amnesty did not protect the Company's own waters. In April 1721, in the roads of Saint-Denis, John Taylor and Levasseur took the Portuguese carrack Nossa Senhora do Cabo with the viceroy of Portuguese India aboard; the governor advanced two thousand piastres towards the ransom. The day is given as 8, 20 and 26 April in three traditions.

The Company's own paper is what these sources cannot yet supply. The issuer of the pass, the day of the taking of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo and the authority behind the Bourbon amnesty remain open, and want the pass itself in CO 5/860, the Company's Surat and Bengal correspondence in the Archives nationales d'outre-mer, and the records of the Conseil superieur. The sums actually subscribed rest on Elisabeth Heijmans's article alone, and want the Company's own acts.

What the evidence does not settle

Rediscovery date of the French passes

  • French passes rediscovered in 1910, not 1911Likely

Taking of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo

  • Nossa Senhora do Cabo taken 8, 20 or 26 April 1721

Basis of the Bourbon amnesty

  • Legal basis of the Bourbon pirate amnesty unestablishedUnverified

Founding date

  • Conventionally dated 27 August 1664, with registration on 1 September

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The Compagnie des Indes orientales was created by a royal declaration of Louis XIV in August 1664, conventionally dated 27 August and registered by the Parlement of Paris on 1 September 1664, on a scheme of Jean-Baptiste Colbert intended to break Dutch and English dominance of the Asian trades, and it held a fifty year monopoly of French navigation and trade from the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Magellan together with the attributes of a delegated sovereignty in territory, justice, coinage and armed force. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Museum institutional publication: La Compagnie des Indes en France (Musee de la Compagnie des Indes, Lorient)
  2. The nominal capital of fifteen million livres tournois was never raised, the real subscription being just over eight million livres of which three million came from the king and the royal family; the reorganisations of 1685 and 1702 are read by Elisabeth Heijmans as informal bankruptcies effected through forced capital increases, and in 1708 the naval minister refused the directors' request to declare bankruptcy and issued private trading licences instead. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Peer reviewed journal article: Elisabeth Heijmans, Investing in French Overseas Companies: A Bad Deal?, Itinerario 43, number 1, 2019
  3. A French pass was a document of protection that placed a vessel, whoever owned her, under the protection of the French crown, sought by Indian and Armenian freighters at Surat as insurance against French cruisers and obtainable through the Company's establishments in India, and the passes taken by William Kidd from the Rupparell and the Quedagh Merchant were the substance of his claim to have made lawful prize rather than piracy, the Quedagh Merchant's pass being issued by Francois Martin, directeur general of the French company in Bengal and Coromandel, at the Hooghly factory on 14 January 1698. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. National archive blog and peer reviewed journal article: A rough deal for Captain Kidd (The National Archives, Kew); David Wilson, Piracy, patronage and political economy: Captain Kidd and the East India Trade, International Journal of Maritime History, 2015
  4. The French passes were not produced when Kidd was tried in London in May 1701, he claimed that Bellomont had withheld them, and they were later found in a Colonial Office volume now held at The National Archives, Kew, as CO 5/860, Board of Trade and Secretaries of State, America and West Indies, Original Correspondence, New England, covering 1698 to 1699. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. National archive blog and archival catalogue record: A rough deal for Captain Kidd (The National Archives, Kew); CO 5/860, The National Archives, Kew, Discovery record C347355
  5. The Company's colony at Ile Bourbon operated a regulated amnesty for pirates, offering Captain Congdon and his 135 men the rights of an inhabitant in return for surrendering their arms and munitions beforehand, renouncing their disorder for ever and keeping faith with the king of France, terms put to Olivier Levasseur and restated on 23 September 1724 by the island's Conseil superieur, a body established five days earlier under a royal edict of 1723 and not a Company organ, when his crew came in and surrendered and he did not. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Secondary research paper and local history chronology: Arnaud Verhille, L'ile Bourbon: Esclaves et Pirates, 2001; Histoire de La Reunion, annee 1724 (mi-aime-a-ou.com)