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The company was superseded with the creation of the Compagnie d'Orient in 1642, and the French East India Company in 1664.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]
Cornelis de Houtman, brother of Frederick de Houtman, was a Dutch explorer who discovered a new sea route from Europe to the East Indies, and who thus begun the Dutch spice trade. At the time, the Portuguese Empire held a monopoly on the spice trade, and the voyage was a symbolic victory for the Dutch, even though the voyage itself was a disaster. Houtman was also a spy, having worked against the Portuguese by bringing back to the Netherlands privileged nautical information obtained during his stay in Portugal.
William Adams, known in Japanese as Miura Anjin, was an English navigator who, in 1600, was the first Englishman to reach Japan during a five-ship expedition for a private Dutch fleet. Of the few survivors of the only ship that reached Japan, Adams and his second mate Jan Joosten were not allowed to leave the country while Jacob Quaeckernaeck and Melchior van Santvoort were to go back to the Dutch Republic to invite them to trade. Adams and Joosten settled in Japan and became two of the first ever Western samurai.
Adriaen (Aerjan) 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). It 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 which was established in 1722 to trade with the East and West Indies. It took its name from the Flemish port city of Ostend.
Melchior van Santvoort was one of the first Dutchmen in Japan, was a purser on the Dutch ship De Liefde, which was stranded in Japan in 1600. Some of his shipmates were Jacob Quaeckernaeck, Jan Joosten, and William Adams. Van Santvoort remained in Japan, where he spent 39 years as a merchant in Nagasaki.
Juan de Silva was a Spanish military commander and governor of the Philippines, from April 1609 until his death on April 19, 1616.
Gerard Reynst was a Dutch merchant and later the second Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.
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.
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 Raad van Indië. 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 Walloon-born 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 French overseas trading company of the seventeenth century. It was founded on 1 June 1604, through the issuance of letter patents by Henry IV to Dieppe merchants, with an eye on the Far East trade possibilities. The establishment of the company gave the merchants exclusive rights to the Asian trade for 15 years, but in the event, 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.
Scourge of Malice or Malice Scourge or Mare Scourge was a 38-gun ship ordered by George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. She was built and launched at Deptford Dockyard in 1595. The Earl used her as his flagship during raids on the Spanish Main, where she provided additional force to support his fleet. She was later renamed Red Dragon; the East India Company used her for at least five voyages to the East Indies. The first recorded performance of the play Hamlet took place on Red Dragon in 1607 while she was anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone.
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 a 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.
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 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 Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands, culminating in the Banda Massacre of 1621, was a process of military conquest from 1609 to 1621 which resulted in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) occupation of the Banda Islands. The islands were severely depopulated by the fighting, starvation, as well as massacres and deportation by the invaders. Thus, the VOC's desired monopoly on the valuable spice trade, particularly nutmeg, mace and clove, was enforced.
