French West India Company

The French West India Company (Compagnie française des Indes occidentales) was a French trading company founded on 28 May 1664, some three months before the foundation of the corresponding eastern company, by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and dissolved on 2 January 1674. The company received the French possessions of the Atlantic coasts of Africa and America, and was granted a monopoly on trade with America, which was to last for forty years. It was supposed to populate Canada, using the profits of the sugar economy that began in Guadeloupe. Its capital was six million pounds and its headquarters was in Le Havre.

The stock of the company was so considerable that in less than six months 45 vessels were equipped with which they took possession of all the places in their grant, and established commerce. On 2 January 1674, the grant was revoked, and the various countries reunited to the king's dominions, as before; the king reimbursed the actions of the adventurers.

This revocation was owing partly to the financial difficulties of the company, caused by its losses in the Franco-Dutch War with rival European nations, which had necessitated it to borrow large sums and even to alienate its exclusive privilege for the coasts of Guinea, but also to its having in good measure answered its end, which was to recover the commerce of the West Indies from the Dutch, who had taken it away from them. The French merchants being so accustomed to trafficking in the Antilles, by permission of the company, and were so attached to it that it was not doubted they would support the commerce after the dissolution of the company.

Action of the company in New France (Canada)
In 1665 the company obtained the Regiment Carignan-Salières to provide security against Iroquois attacks, and contributed to the settlement of the colony with the arrival of 1200 men from the Dauphiné, Liguria, Piedmont and Savoy. In 1666, Jean Talon organized the first census, counting 3215 inhabitants. The population of the colony grew to 6700 inhabitants in 1672, as a result of policies encouraging marriage and fertility. In 1667, several tribes of Iroquois, the Mohawks and Oneidas, agreed to make peace.

Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye, fur trader in Tadoussac between 1663 and 1666, was appointed general clerk of the company from 1666 to 1669, when he left the company for logging in Lac-Saint-Jean, a break and a long stay in La Rochelle, which allows him to establish business relations with several European countries and owning several vessels.

Upon his return to Canada Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye obtained shortly after the dissolution of the company, from 1675 and until 1681, the rights of the firm of the Company of the West and his friend Jean Oudiette, and holding the monopoly of beaver pelts, then Canada's main export. In 1672, Jean Talon granted him, with two other partners, the lordship of Percé to serve as a port for fishing boats. He received the seigniory of Riviere-du-Loup December 23, 1673. Chesnaye also bought half the fiefs of St. Francis and St. John (1677), the lordships of the park east of Rivière-du-Loup (1675), and Hare Island (1677).

Action in the Caribbean
Tobacco plantations were highly developed in other French colonies. The company got a monopoly on the slave trade from Senegal, which since 1658 belonged to the Company of Cape Verde and Senegal. In 1666 the company created two counters in Dahomey (Benin), Savi and Ouidah, which bought other tropical products.

The company faced the interests of the French settlers in the Caribbean, who were engaged in smuggling with the Dutch. Its commercial monopoly led to the resale price of sugar becoming prohibitive compared to sugarcane produced and refined in Barbados and Jamaica.

French sugar planters complained and accused the company of not delivering enough slaves, while neighboring islands controlled by other European powers had imported slaves on a large scale from the early 1670s.

In 1665, the company acquired Saint Croix from the Knights of Malta (a vassal state of the Kingdom of Sicily) who had ruled the island in the name of Louis XIV since 1651. The colony was evacuated to San Domingo in 1695, when France battled the English and Dutch in the War of the Grand Alliance. The island then lay uninhabited and abandoned for another 38 years when it was sold to the Danish West India Company.

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African policy
At first, the Dutch household Colbert prefers, he seeks to come to France to create factories, as Abbeville with the creation of the following year, in 1665, the Manufacture Royale des Rames by rich tapestry Dutch, the family Van Robais, which will have 2,500 employees at its peak. Until the late 1660s, Colbert therefore limits set on the French coast of Africa, in order not to get too the price of slaves, and not to get angry with the formidable Dutch traders. In fact, on the coast of Guinea, West India Company subcontracts often trafficking underworld Dutch.

In 1669, however, Colbert and his entourage prepare a secret plan to seize the fortified trading that the Dutch have, especially on the Gold Coast (now Ghana ). Several reconnaissance missions were organized to feed the plan of attack. From November 1670 to December 1671, for example, Colbert sends the ship Le Tourbillon, commanded by Captain Louis de Hally and edited by Louis Ancelin Gémozac, an engineer in charge of the Navy plans to raise strong, to report all the necessary elements for the decision. The plan will, however, never achieved and the attention of the Minister and the King soon turns to the Dutch War. Nevertheless, diplomatic relations were established with the African states of the Gold Coast which shall endure until the times of Louis XIV.

Dissolution (1674)
The Dutch war from 1672 to disrupt the operation of the company, which was dissolved in December 1674 by the Edict of Saint-Germain en Laye, after accusing a liability of five million pounds. In 1666, the King had offered freedom of individuals to trade France. July 21, 1670, he opened access to the islands "all traders of the kingdom", but it takes a little time for the French fleet is up to that of the Dutch.

An ephemeral Compagnie d'Occident was created just after the West India Company, but the creation of the West Farm actually an empty shell, whose name is famous, however, used in 1717 after the death of Louis XIV when the Installation System Law.

The king again in 1674 the direct administration of the colonies. He founded jointly Farm West and the Senegal Company, asks for a more aggressive policy slavery and removes the monopoly from that date, the slave of major French ports also have the right to engage in trafficking. This is the beginning of the rise of Irish Nantes, large traders triangular trade, mostly immigrants Jacobite allies of Louis XIV and his cousin Jacques II of England.

The dissolution of the West India Company and the creation of the Senegal Company the same year led to the development of culture Martinique sugar. The production of the two French islands password 5800-8700 tonnes of sugar between 1674 and 1682, an increase of 50%. During these seven years, going from 2,400 to 10,600 slaves in Martinique where many noble families settled French and Irish, part of which comes from Barbados.

Dissolution coincided with a hardening of the treatment of slaves. It is in 1673 that are made early decisions to Métis children relate to the status of slaves and their mother in 1680 what the board ruled planters of Guadeloupe stipulating that all children are born black women slaves. In 1680, there are 314 mulattos in Martinique, Guadeloupe and 170 in only 350 at Barbados, where the slave population, however, is eight times more numerous but which were passed in the 1660s strict laws on the matter, which be the source of the black code.

(previous text follows, will integrate) In the history of French trade, the French West India Company (French: Compagnie des Indes occidentales) was a chartered company established in 1664. Their charter gave them the property and seignory of Canada, Acadia, the Antilles, Cayenne, and the terra firma of South America, from the Amazon to the Orinoco. They had an exclusive privilege for the commerce of those places, and also of Senegal and the coasts of Guinea, for forty years, only paying half the duties.

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