Chronological Overview of the French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842

Chapter 1 provides a chronological overview of France’s near century and a half (1698–1842) in the Canton Trade. The Europe trade was carried out for its first two decades by private traders to whom the French East India Company leased its China monopoly on a limited basis; then, following reorganization in 1719, the Company began to exercise that monopoly itself, sending ships to Canton from 1720 to 1769. In 1769 the trade was opened to all French subjects and continued so until 1785, when the third Company was created; and when the trade was opened once and for all to all French nationals in 1790, this Company became private, in competition with other private companies before it was abolished in 1793. The intra-Asian (country) trade, in contrast, was initially in the hands of the Company, which remained involved in it to some degree before the trade went wholly private in the early 1740s. The French experience demonstrates the need for a reassessment of the traditional definitions of the terms “private” and “company,” and “Europe” and “intra-Asian,” proving that the distinctions between them are in fact far more nuanced, and indeed, often blurry, than traditionally acknowledged.