Establishment of the Company
In 1775, the then 37-year-old Dutch-born British merchant William Bolts offered his services to theThe voyage of the ''Giuseppe e Teresa,'' 1776–81
On 24 September 1776, Bolts sailed fromColonisation of Delagoa Bay
In the next few years Bolts established factories on the Malabar Coast in India, on the South East African coast at Delagoa Bay in modern Mozambique, and at the Nicobar Islands. His aim in establishing a factory at Delagoa Bay was to use it as a base for trade between East Africa and the West coast ports of India. He procured three ships to conduct this “country” trade, as trade by Europeans between India and other non-European destinations was called. During his voyage out he obtained BrazilianActivities in India, 1776–81
When it learned of Bolts’s venture, the British East India Company (EIC) instructed its officers in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay to “pursue the most effectual means that can be fully justified to counteract and defeat” him. Still, in 1774 the EIC had ceded Banki Bazaar on the Hooghli River, upstream from Calcutta, to the Ostend Company or Austrian East India Company. This was still in Austrian hands in 1794, but the British eventually took it over, probably shortly thereafter. Bolts took full advantage of Austria’s neutral status in the war between Britain and France, Spain, and Holland (1778–1783) that formed part of the struggle for American independence. The Company’s repeated acts of hostility against Bolts in India were the subject of urgent representations by the Austrian Ambassador in London, resulting in the sending in January 1782 of instructions from the Court of Directors to India, which ordered their officers in India not to give offence to "any subject of his Imperial Majesty". Although when Bolt first arrived in India, at Surat, he was confronted with a wall of opposition erected by the East India Company, he soon made himself known to Hyder Ali, Nawab of Mysore and the strongest opponent of the English in India. He visited the Nawab at his capital, Seringapatam, where he was granted permission to establish trading factories in the Nawab’s Malabar Coast dominions at Mangalore, Karwar, and Baliapatam.Colonisation of the Nicobar Islands
While Bolts himself was at Seringapatam, he sent the ''Joseph und Theresia'' to theDispute between Bolts and Proli
In spite of his many achievements since 1776, Bolts’s venture on the whole had made a loss, to the dismay of his Belgian financial backers, Charles Proli and his associates. Proli also disagreed with Bolts over the importance of the China market: Proli wanted to concentrate exclusively on that market while Bolts urged the equal importance of India as Austrian commodities, such as mercury, lead, copper, iron, tin and vitriol, could find sale there, in contrast to China where only Spanish silver dollars were accepted in return for Chinese products such as tea, porcelain and silk. While Bolts was still in India, the Proli group sent out two ships, the ''Ville de Vienne'' to Mauritius and the ''Prince Kaunitz'' to China, without informing him. In ignorance of Bolts’s purchase of a ship he called the ''Prince Kaunitz,'' the Proli group sent another ship of the same name to China independently of him. This action constituted a breach of the Proli's contract with him. Proli refused to honour the bills Bolts drew upon their bank while he was in India. They petitioned the Imperial Government to have Bolts charter transferred exclusively to them. The Proli group also seized the ''Joseph et Therese'' as security when the vessel returned to Leghorn. At an audience with Emperor Joseph II in Brussels on 28 July 1781, Bolt and Proli agreed to the transformation of their association into a share company, and in August Bolts surrendered his charters to the new Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp for the Commerce of Asia (Société Impériale pour le Commerce Asiatique de Trieste et d’Anvers). The Company was to send six ships to China and India, two to East Africa and Mauritius, and three for the southern whale fishery.Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp
The Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp was opened to public subscription in August 1781 to raise, nominally, half its capital in one thousand shares. In fact, the Company was seriously under-capitalized, as the other thousand shares held by the Proli group and Bolts were paid for by the nominal value of the assets of the former association. Bolts’s valuation of those assets was accepted at face value, but it was a fictitious valuation and in fact the new Company inherited the old association’s debts. It consequently suffered chronic lack of cash and had to resort to short term loans and bottomry bonds (for which the ships themselves were the collateral) at a premium of 30 to 35 per cent. Under these conditions, every voyage had to be a success for the Company to remain viable. Also under the terms of the agreement erecting the new company, Bolts ceded his charter to his Belgian partners in return for a loan of 200,000 florins (that is, his 200 shares in the Company) and the right to send two ships on his own account to China. The Imperial Asiatic Company under the direction of the Proli group focussed on the China tea trade. In 1781, 1782 and 1783 the price of tea in Europe, especially in England, had risen to unheard of levels. In 1781 and 1782 no Dutch or French ships appeared at Guangzhou (then romanized as "Canton") as a result of the American War, and in 1782 only eleven English, three Danish and two Swedish ships called there. Only four out of thirteen English ships returned safely in 1783 due to French naval activity. Attempting to seize the opportunity to make good profits, the Proli group sent five ships to Canton: the ''Croate,'' the ''Kollowrath,'' the ''Zinzendorff,'' the ''Archiduc Maximilien,'' and the ''Autrichien.'' However, the opportunity had been missed as, with the signing of an armistice in January 1783 the former belligerents were able to send their ships to Canton safely, and the summer of 1783 saw a total of thirty-eight ships there, including the five Imperial vessels. They had to buy tea at a high price, and when they returned to Ostend in July 1784 they had to sell at a low price on a glutted market, as well as having to pay for permission to return to that port. The price of tea at Ostend collapsed when the British Government introduced the ''The Ostenders
The Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp flourished despite the opposition of its rivals, the English and Dutch East India Companies, during the period when Britain found itself at war with Holland and France as a development of the American War of Independence. The Imperial Company benefited from Austria’s neutrality during this conflict by being able to send its ships to Canton while its rival companies were prevented from doing so. When the war ended, the Dutch and English companies returned in a rush to Canton, which raised the price of Chinese tea and other goods there and caused a glut of them when the ships returned to Europe. The trade from the Austrian Netherlands to India which had been recommenced by Bolts and the Imperial East India Company was continued after the collapse of that company in February 1785 by a group of Belgian and English merchants headed by the Vicomte Edouard de Walckiers, whose family had played a part in the story of the Ostend Company which traded to India earlier in the eighteenth century and who, together with the Marseilles banker Kick, had been one of the biggest shareholders in the Imperial Company. The British merchants were mainly represented by the Brussels bankers, Charles Herries & Co. William Bolts’ company, referred to as the Société Triestine à Trieste, was apparently also connected with this group. From 1787, this association sent several ships to India from Ostend, the first of them being the ''St. Joseph''. In the following years the ships ''Concordia'', ''Prudencia'', ''Belgioioso'', ''Ville de Vienne'', ''Henriette'' and ''Comtesse de Trautmannsdorff'' went to India. These voyages were undertaken exclusively to India, since the Chinese forbade trade to the Imperial flag until the debts which the Imperial Company had incurred in Canton, including 12% annual interest, were met. As Walckiers and his associates did not want to become involved in that matter, China remained closed to their trade, while India and Mauritius remained the destination of around a dozen ships, until the French Revolutionary Wars put an end to these enterprises in the mid-1790s.Franz von Pollack-Parnau, "Eine österreich-ostindische Handelskompanie, 1775–1785: Beitrag zur österreichische Wirtschaftsgeschichte unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II", ''Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgesichte,'' Beiheft 12, Stuttgart, 1927, S.100–102; Michael Horvath & Hannes Zimmermann,See also
*References
Further reading
* Fulvio Babudieri, ''Trieste e gli Interessi austriaci in Asia nei Secoli XVIII e XIX,'' Padova, CEDAM, 1966. * Sven H. Carlson, ''Trade and Dependency,'' Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsalensis, 1984, ''Studia Historica Upsalensis,'' No.138. * John Everaert, "Willem Bolts: India Regained and Lost: Indiamen, Imperial Factories and Country Trade (1775–1785)", in K.S. Mathew (ed.), ''Mariners, Merchants, and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History,'' New Delhi, Manohar, 1995, pp. 363–369. * Holden Furber, “In the Footsteps of a German ‘Nabob’: William Bolts in the Swedish Archives”, ''The Indian Archives,'' vol.12, nos.1–2, January–December 1958; reprinted in Holden Furber, ''Private Fortunes and Company Profits in the India Trade in the 18th Century,'' edited by Rosane Rocher, Aldershot and Brookfield, Variorum, 1997, ''Variorum Collected Studies'' CS569). * Barry M. Gough and Robert J. King, “William Bolts: An Eighteenth Century Merchant Adventurer”, ''Archives: the Journal of the British Records Association,'' vol.xxxi, no.112, April 2005, pp. 8–28.N.L. Hallward, William Bolts, A Dutch Adventurer under John Company, Cambridge University Press, 1920. * Helma Houtman-De Smedt, “The ambitions of the Austrian empire with reference to East India during the last quarter of the eighteenth century”, Chaudhury Sushil (ed.), ''Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era,'' Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 232-3. * Helga Hühnel, "Botanische Sammelreise nach Amerika in 18. Jahrhundert", Franz Wawrik et al (eds.), ''Die Neue Welt: Oesterreich und die Erforschung Amerikas,'' Wien, Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, 1992. * Robert J. King,