The Company of the Moluccas (French : Compagnie des Moluques) was a French trading company which was established in 1615 for trade in the East Indies. The company received trading privileges for the Far East for a period of 18 years. [1]
On 1 June 1604, the French king Henry IV issued letter patents to Dieppe merchants to form the Dieppe Company, giving them exclusive rights to Asian trade for 15 years, but no ships were finally sent. [2] Other cities such as Rouen maneuvered to obtain trading rights. [2]
In 1615, the regent Marie de Médicis incorporated the merchants of Dieppe and other harbours to found the Company of the Moluccas. In 1616, two expeditions were sent to Asia from Honfleur in Normandy: three ships left for India, and two ships for Bantam. One ship returned from Bantam in 1617 with a small cargo, and letters from the Dutch expressing their hostility toward French ships in the East Indies. [2] Also in 1616, two ships were sent from Saint-Malo to Java. One was captured by the Dutch, but the other obtained an agreement from the ruler of Pondicherry to build a fortress and a factory there, and returned with a rich cargo. [2]
One of the main enterprises of the Company of the Moluccas was the expedition of Augustin de Beaulieu in 1619–1622.
The company was superseded with the creation of the Compagnie d'Orient in 1642, and the French East India Company in 1664. [3]
The United East India Company, commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces and subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies, and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times.
Cornelis de Houtman was a Dutch merchant seaman who commanded the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies. Although the voyage was difficult and yielded only a modest profit, Houtman showed that the Portuguese monopoly on the spice trade was vulnerable. A flurry of Dutch trading voyages followed, eventually leading to the displacement of the Portuguese and the establishment of a Dutch monopoly on spice trading in the East Indies.
Willem Cornelisz Schouten was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean.
Adriaen Courtsen Block was a Dutch private trader, privateer, and ship's captain who is best known for exploring the coastal and river valley areas between present-day New Jersey and Massachusetts during four voyages from 1611 to 1614, following the 1609 expedition by Henry Hudson. He is noted for possibly having named Block Island, Rhode Island, and establishing early trade with the Native Americans, and for the 1614 map of his last voyage on which many features of the mid-Atlantic region appear for the first time, and on which the term New Netherland is first applied to the region. He is credited with being the first European to enter Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, and to determine that Manhattan and Long Island are islands.
The Eendracht was an early 17th century Dutch wooden-hulled 700 tonne East Indiaman, launched in 1615 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Its Dutch name means "concord", "unity" or "union", and was a common name given to Dutch ships of the period, from the motto of the Republic: Concordia res parvae crescunt . The ship was captained by Dirk Hartog when he made the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, in 1616.
The Ostend Company, officially the General Company Established in the Austrian Netherlands for Commerce and Navigation in the Indies was a chartered trading company in the Austrian Netherlands in the Holy Roman Empire which was established in 1722 to trade with the East and West Indies. It took its name from the Flemish port city of Ostend.
Juan de Silva was a Spanish military commander and governor of the Philippines, from April 1609 until his death on April 19, 1616.
Laurens Reael was an employee of the Dutch East India Company, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies from 1616 to 1619, and an admiral of the Dutch Republican Navy from 1625 to 1627.
Company rule in the Dutch East Indies began when the Dutch East India Company appointed the first governor-general of the Dutch East Indies in 1610, and ended in 1800 when the bankrupt company was dissolved and its possessions were nationalized as the Dutch East Indies. By then it exerted territorial control over much of the archipelago, most notably on Java.
Steven van der Hagen was the first admiral of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He made three visits to the East Indies, spending six years in all there. He was appointed to the Council of the Indies. Van der Hagen protested against the harsh administration of the administrators, who wanted a monopoly on the clove trade and were willing to fight against their Spanish, Portuguese, English or Asiatic trade competitors in order to get it. Laurens Reael and Steven van der Hagen wrote with disapproval on how the Heren XVII treated the interests and laws of the Maluku population.
Isaac Le Maire was a Dutch entrepreneur, investor, and a sizeable shareholder of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He is best known for his constant strife with the VOC, which ultimately led to the discovery of Cape Horn.
France–Asia relations span a period of more than two millennia, starting in the 6th century BCE with the establishment of Marseille by Greeks from Asia Minor, and continuing in the 3rd century BCE with Gaulish invasions of Asia Minor to form the kingdom of Galatia, and Frankish Crusaders forming the Crusader states. Since these early interactions, France has had a rich history of contacts with the Asian continent.
The Dieppe Company was a 17th-century French overseas trading company. It was founded on 1 June 1604 through the issuance of letter patents by Henry IV to Dieppe merchants, with an eye to Far East trade possibilities. The establishment of the company gave the merchants exclusive rights to the Asian trade for 15 years, but ultimately no trading expeditions were mounted by the company under this name.
Augustin de Beaulieu (1589–1637) was a French general, who in 1619 led an armed expedition to the East Indies composed of three ships and called the "Fleet of Montmorency", after its sponsor the Admiral Montmorency.
Paulus van Caerden was a Dutch admiral in service of the Dutch East India Company. He was governor of the Maluku Islands for one month.
Sir Henry Middleton was an English sea captain and adventurer. He negotiated with the sultan of Ternate and the sultan of Tidore, competed against Dutch and Portuguese interests in the East Indies but still managed to buy cloves. He had two brothers, John Middleton, the eldest who was captain of East India Company (EIC) galleon Hector and director of EIC and David Middleton, a mariner working for EIC.
David Middleton was a merchant and sea-captain in the service of the English East India Company who made several voyages by sea to the Far East.
Balthazar de Moucheron (1552–1630) was a Dutch trader, ship owner, and one of the founders of the Dutch East India Company, but never participated as he went bankrupt in the same year. He is known for his early trading with India (Calcutta) and Indonesia, America, the west coast of Africa, the Baltic Sea, and the White Sea (Archangelsk).
The Old Company was a pre-company of the Dutch Republic and originated from the Company of Verre and the New Company, from Amsterdam, in 1598. The directors were Dirck van Os, Jan Hermansz, Jan Janss Carel (Kaerel) and Geraerdt (Gerrit) Bicker. Directors with a smaller share of the investment were: Vincent van Bronckhorst, Symon Jansz Fortuyn, Geurt Dircxz, Cornelis van Campen, Jacob Thomasz Van den Dael, Elbert Simonsz Jonckheyn, Petrus Plancius, Syvert Sern, Jan Poppe, Geurt Dirckss and Pieter Hasselaer. The Old Company and the (New) Brabant Company would merge in 1601 and become the United Amsterdam Company.
