Compagnie de Chine

The Compagnie de Chine was a French trading company established in 1660 by the Catholic society Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, in order to dispatch missionaries to Asia (initially Bishops François Pallu, Pierre Lambert de la Motte and Ignace Cotolendi of the newly founded Paris Foreign Missions Society).[1] The company was modelled on the Dutch East India Company.[2]

A ship was built in the Netherlands by the shipowner Fermanel, but the ship foundered soon after being launched.[3] The only remaining solution for the missionaries was to travel on land, since Portugal would have refused to take non-Padroado missionaries by ship, and the Dutch and the English refused to take Catholic missionaries.[4]

In 1664, the China Company would be fused by Jean-Baptiste Colbert with the Compagnie d'Orient and Compagnie de Madagascar into the Compagnie des Indes Orientales.

A second Compagnie de Chine was established in 1698.[5]

The Compagnie de Chine was reactivated in 1723.[6]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Mantienne, p.28
  2. ↑ Asia in the Making of Europe, p.232
  3. ↑ Mantienne, p.28
  4. ↑ Missions, p.4
  5. ↑ The French Image of China Before and After Voltaire - Page 155 by Basil Guy
  6. ↑ Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century by Theodore Besterman, p.56

References

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