The Compagnie de Calonne was the last iteration of the ''Compagnie des Indes'', a series of French state-sponsored ventures to compete with the British

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

and

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States Ge ...

. It was established in 1785 at the initiative of

Charles Alexandre de Calonne Charles Alexandre de Calonne (20 January 173430 October 1802), titled Count of Hannonville in 1759, was a French statesman, best known for being Louis XVI's Controller-General of Finances (minister of finance) in the years leading up to the Frenc ...

, and eventually liquidated in 1794 in the turmoil of the French Revolution.

Overview

Following the liquidation of the

French Indies Company The French Indies Company () was the main French overseas trading company during most of Louis XV's long reign in the 18th century. It emerged in March 1723 from the reorganization of John Law's Company following the termination of John Law's g ...

in 1770, a new company was reconstituted in 1785, and issued 40,000 shares of stock, priced at 1,000 livres apiece. It was given monopoly on all trade with countries beyond the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

for an agreed period of seven years. Unlike the previous iterations of the French Indies Company, the new venture did not hold civil or military power in its overseas outposts, nor did it fully control the port infrastructure at

Lorient Lorient (; ) is a town (''Communes of France, commune'') and Port, seaport in the Morbihan Departments of France, department of Brittany (administrative region), Brittany in western France. History Prehistory and classical antiquity Beginn ...

which by then belonged to the

French Navy The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...

. Even so, it had a promising start, but that was cut short by the French Revolution. On 3 April 1790 the monopoly was abolished by an act of the new

Constituent Assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...

which enthusiastically declared that the lucrative Far Eastern trade would henceforth be "thrown open to all Frenchmen". The

Committee of Public Safety The Committee of Public Safety () was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution. Supplementing the Committee of General D ...

had banned all joint-stock companies on 24 August 1793, and specifically seized the assets and papers of the East India Company. While its liquidation proceedings were being set up, directors of the company bribed various senior state officials to allow the company to carry out its own liquidation, rather than be supervised by the government. When this became known the following year, the resulting scandal led to the execution of key Montagnard deputies like

Fabre d'Églantine Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine (; 28 July 1750 – 5 April 1794), commonly known as Fabre d'Églantine, was a French actor, dramatist, poet, and politician of the French Revolution. He is best known for having invented the names o ...

and Joseph Delaunay, among others. The infighting sparked by the episode also brought down

Georges Danton Georges Jacques Danton (; ; 26 October 1759 – 5 April 1794) was a leading figure of the French Revolution. A modest and unknown lawyer on the eve of the Revolution, Danton became a famous orator of the Cordeliers Club and was raised to gove ...

and can be said to have led to the downfall of the Montagnards as a whole.

References

French East India Company Colonial Indian companies 1785 establishments in France Companies established in 1785 Trading companies of France Trade monopolies French slave trade {{France-stub

Overview

See also

References