The Shareholders’ Revolt at the Compagnie des Indes: Commerce and Political Culture in Old Regime France

摘要

During the 1760s a fierce political struggle developed between the shareholders and the royal ministry over the administration and continued operations of the Compagnie des Indes. Portraying themselves as members of a self-governing commercial republic, the shareholders insisted that ultimate authority rested with their assembly and accused the ministry of despotic interference in company affairs. The ministry, concerned with the financial stability of the company, employed the abbé Morellet to shift the debate from the rights of the shareholders to the advantages of commercial liberty over the company’s privileged trading monopoly. Although the ministry succeeded in ending the commercial operations of the Compagnie des Indes, the affair had taken place in the public sphere where the publicist Pidansat de Mairobert and the financier Jacques Necker, among others, extolled the patriotism of the shareholders, condemned the despotism of the ministry, and insisted upon the importance of the company to France’s international presence. By including an account of the shareholders’ meetings in his anti-Maupeou publications of the 1770s, Mairobert linked the affair to the infamous Maupeou reforms, thereby broadening the patriot attack on ministerial government.