William Bolts
William Bolts was a Dutch-born British merchant active in India. He began his career as an employee of the East India Company, and subsequently became an independent merchant. He is best known today for his 1772 book, Considerations on India Affairs, which detailed the administration of the East India Company in Bengal which began shortly after their victory in the Battle of Plassey in June 1757. The observations and experiences he recorded offer a unique resource for scholars inquiring into the nature of Company rule in Bengal. Throughout his life, Bolts continued to propose and execute various trading ventures on his own behalf and in conjunction with various commercial and governmental partners. The ventures of individual traders, like Bolts, did much to spur governments and large corporations into the expansion of their own interests.
Origin
William Bolts was born in Amsterdam on 7 February 1739. The baptismal register of the English Reformed Church at Amsterdam records his baptism on 21 February 1739. His parents were William and Sarah Bolts. Bolts himself declared that his father was a native of Heidelberg and therefore claimed to be "a subject of Germany", although at the time of this statement he was attempting to get out of legal problems with the Company. Some sources suggest that Bolts himself was born in Germany. Many writers have claimed that Bolts was of ethnic Dutch origin, although writer Willem G.J. Kuiters notes that this claim appears to originate with a single source, the Biographie universelle from 1812, and is not confirmed by Dutch archival sources.Service in the East India Company
When Bolts was 15, he left for England. According to a deposition he made in 1801, Bolts lived in Portugal in 1755 where he spent some time working in the diamond trade. Four years later, Bolts decided to venture to Bengal, where he was employed in Calcutta as a factor in the service of the East India Company. He learned to speak Bengali, in addition to his other languages, English, Dutch, German, Portuguese and French. Later, he was appointed to the Company's Benares factory, where he opened a woolens mart, developed saltpeter manufacturing, established opium plantations, imported cotton, and promoted the trade in diamonds from the Panna and Chudderpoor mines in Bundelkhand.He came into conflict with the East India Company in 1768, possibly because diamonds were a favorite means for Company employees to secretly remit back home profits made by private trade in India, which they were officially forbidden to engage in. He announced in September of that year that he intended to start up a newspaper in Calcutta, saying that he had "in manuscript many things to communicate which most intimately concerned every individual", but he was directed to quit Bengal, and proceed to Madras and from thence to take his passage to England. Company officials declared him bankrupt, "to the irretrievable loss of his Fortune", he later claimed. He never seemed to have been able to redeem himself in the eyes of the Company, and in London and elsewhere fought a rearguard action against his many opponents within it.
''Considerations on India Affairs''
The rearguard action occurred in 1772 with the publication of his book Considerations on India Affairs, in which he attacked the administration of the East India Company in Bengal; and in particular complained of the arbitrary power exercised by the authorities and of his own deportation. Considerations was translated into French and enjoyed wide circulation, which contributed to his fame on the Continent. The observations and experiences he records still offer a unique resource for scholars inquiring into the nature of Company rule in Bengal.The voyage of the ''Giuseppe e Teresa,'' 1776–1781
In 1775, Bolts offered his services to the government of the Holy Roman Empire, putting forward a proposal for re-establishing Austrian trade with India from the Adriatic port of Trieste. His proposal was accepted by the government of Empress Maria Theresa, and on 24 September 1776, Bolts sailed from Leghorn in the dominions of Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the younger son of the Empress, to India in command of a ship under the Imperial flag, the former Indiaman Earl of Lincoln, renamed the Giuseppe e Teresa. He took with him a ten-year charter authorizing him to trade under Imperial colors between Austria's Adriatic ports and Persia, India, China and Africa, and from Africa and Madagascar to America. This enterprise required substantial capital, which Bolts sought in the Austrian Netherlands, and he brought in the Antwerp banker, Charles Proli, and his associates, the bankers I.C.I. Borrikens and D. Nagel.Colonisation of Delagoa Bay
In the next few years Bolts established factories on the Malabar Coast, on the South East African coast at Delagoa Bay and at the Nicobar Islands. His aim in establishing a factory at Delagoa Bay was to use it as a base for trade between East Africa and the West coast ports of India. He procured three ships to conduct this "country" trade, as trade by Europeans between India and other non-European destinations was called. During his voyage out, he obtained Brazilian cochineal beetles at Rio de Janeiro, and transported them to Delagoa Bay, thereby predating the introduction to Bengal of this insect for the making of scarlet dyes and carmine. The Imperial flag did not fly for long over Delagoa Bay, as alarmed Portuguese authorities who claimed the place as their own sent a 40-gun frigate and 500 men from Goa to remove Bolts's men in April 1781, and to found the Presidio of Lourenço Marques that established a permanent Portuguese presence there.Activities in India, 1776–1781
When it learned of Bolts's venture, the East India Company instructed its officers in Bengal, Madras and Bombay to "pursue the most effectual means that can be fully justified to counteract and defeat" him. Bolts took full advantage of Austria's neutral status in the war between Britain and France, Spain and the Dutch Republic during 1778 to 1783 that formed part of the war for American independence. The Company's hostility towards Bolts in India were the subject of urgent representations by the Austrian Ambassador in London, resulting in the sending in January 1782 of instructions from the Court of Directors to India, which ordered their officers in India not to give offence to "any subject of his Imperial Majesty". Although when he first arrived in India, at Surat, the East India Company made every effort to frustrate his activities, he soon made himself known to Hyder Ali, the Nawab of Mysore. He visited Hyder Ali at his capital, Seringapatam, where he was granted permission to establish trading factories in the Nawab's Malabar Coast dominions at Mangalore, Karwar and Baliapatam.Colonisation of the Nicobar Islands
While Bolts himself was at Seringapatam, he sent the Joseph und Theresia to the Nicobar Islands, where she arrived in June 1778. There her captain, Bennet, took possession on 12 July. The islands were the focus of a Christian missionary effort of the Moravian Brethren, who visited from time to time from the Danish base on the Indian mainland at Tranquebar. In consequence of Bolts' action, the Imperial company had established a trading factory on the island of Nancowery, headed by Gottfried Stahl who was accompanied by five other Europeans. Danish authorities strongly protested against Bolts' action in taking possession of the Nicobars, and in 1783 sent a warship to remove the Austrians.Bolts in dispute with Proli
In spite of his many achievements since 1776, Bolts's venture, on the whole, had made a loss, to the dismay of his Belgian financial backers, Charles Proli and his associates. Proli also disagreed with Bolts over the importance of the China market: Proli wanted to concentrate exclusively on that market while Bolts urged the equal importance of India as Austrian commodities, such as mercury, lead, copper, iron, tin, and vitriol, could find sale there, in contrast to China where only Spanish silver dollars were accepted in return for Chinese products such as tea, porcelain, and silk.While Bolts was still in India, the Proli group sent out two ships, the Ville de Vienne to Mauritius and the Prince Kaunitz to China, without informing him. In ignorance of Bolts' purchase of a ship he called the Prince Kaunitz, the Proli group sent another ship of the same name to China independently of him. This constituted a breach of their contract with him. They refused to honor the bills he drew upon their bank while he was in India. Proli petitioned the Imperial Government to have Bolts' charter transferred exclusively to him. Proli also seized the Joseph et Therese as security when the vessel returned to Leghorn.
At an audience with Emperor Joseph II in Brussels on 28 July 1781, Bolts and Proli agreed to the transformation of their association into a share company, and in August, Bolts surrendered his charters to the new Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp for the Commerce of Asia. The Company was to send six ships to China and India, two to East Africa and Mauritius, and three for the southern whale fishery.
Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp
The Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp was opened to public subscription in August 1781 to raise, nominally, half its capital in one thousand shares. In fact, the Company was seriously under-capitalized, as the other thousand shares held by the Proli group and Bolts were paid for by the nominal value of the assets of the former association. Bolts' valuation of those assets was accepted at face value, but it was a fictitious valuation and in fact the new Company inherited the old association's debts. It consequently suffered chronic lack of cash and had to resort to short-term loans and bottomry bonds at a premium of 30 to 35 per cent. Under these conditions, every voyage had to be a success for the Company to remain viable. Also under the terms of the agreement erecting the new company, Bolts ceded his charter to his Belgian partners in return for a loan of 200,000 florins and the right to send two ships on his own account to China. The "new India Company, under the direction of Mr. Boltz", known as the Triestine Society, was announced by the press in Trieste on 17 August 1782, with a reference to the two vessels it would possess.The Imperial Asiatic Company, under the direction of the Proli group, focussed on the China tea trade. In 1781, 1782 and 1783 the price of tea in Europe, especially in England, had risen to unheard of levels. In 1781 and 1782 no Dutch or French ships appeared at Canton as a result of the American War, and in 1782 only eleven English, three Danish and two Swedish ships called there. Only four out of thirteen British ships returned safely in 1783 due to French depredations. Attempting to seize the opportunity to make good profits, the Proli group sent five ships to Canton: the Croate, the Kollowrath, the Zinzendorff, the Archiduc Maximilien, and the Autrichien.
However, the opportunity had been missed as, with the signing of an armistice in January 1783 the former belligerents were able to send their ships to Canton safely, and the summer of 1783 saw a total of thirty-eight ships there, including the five Imperial vessels. They had to buy tea at a high price, but when they returned to Ostend in July 1784 they had to sell at a low price on a glutted market, as well as having to pay for permission to return to that port. The price of tea at Ostend collapsed when the British Government introduced the Commutation Act in 1784, which reduced the tax on tea from fifty to ten per cent and made smuggling from the Netherlands unprofitable.
The price of tea in Europe fell suddenly from 30 to 33 French sols to 11 to 14 sols, or around sixty per cent. Disastrously, a sixth ship, the Belgioioso, carrying a large amount of silver specie for the purchase of Chinese goods, foundered in a storm in the Irish Sea soon after departing Liverpool, where she was fitted out, on the voyage to Canton. Regardless of mounting losses, debts and liabilities, the Company invested in a further ship, the Kaiserliche Adler or Aigle Impériale , a giant of 1,100 tons, specially built for the Company by the Fiume shipyards, which was launched in March 1784, bringing the Company's fleet to a total of nine vessels.
Matters came to a head in January 1785 when the Company suspended all payments, and shortly afterward it was declared bankrupt, bringing the Proli banking house down with it. Charles Proli committed suicide. An article in the Dublin press of 25 May 1786 recorded the sale of the dissolved company's ships, Zinderdorf , Kollowrath, Kaunitz, Maximilian and Austrian, "together with their whole apparel, guns, stores, &c." and observed: "The destruction of this company, as well as several others in Europe, is in a great measure owing to the commutation tea tax in England, and the advantages which territorial possessions throw in favour of the British company."
In February 1785, in the unfolding bankruptcy of the Imperial Asiatic Company, the Aigle Impériale was seized by creditors at Cadiz, where she had gone to load Spanish dollars to pay for tea and other goods in China. Eventually she was chartered by the Royal Company of the Philippines for a voyage to explore the best direct route to the Philippines from Spain, as opposed to the traditional Acapulco-Manila galleon route. Under the name Aguila Imperial she sailed for the Philippines under the command of Francisco Muñoz y San Clemente, departing Cadiz on 23 January 1786, calling at the Cape of Good Hope and Java, and arriving at Manila on 9 August of that year. She sailed on the return voyage to Spain from Manila on 11 January 1787, called at Mauritius, and arrived at Cadiz on 17 March 1788. Her voyage was complemented by that of the Astrea, which left Cadiz in June 1786 under the command of Alejandro Malaspina, going out to the Philippines for the Company by the Cape Horn route and returning to Spain by the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Cadiz on 17 May 1788.