Journey
Austrian India — 1722 to 1785
The Habsburgs tried twice and failed twice. The Ostend Company held two factories from 1722 until European diplomacy and a Mughal governor removed them; fifty years later William Bolts sailed from Trieste under Maria Theresa's charter and planted four more. Almost nothing of either attempt survives anywhere on the Indian ground they stood on.
Stops (8)
- Banquibazar · 1722–1737
The imperial settlement on the Hooghly, north of Barrackpore and deliberately placed between English Calcutta and Dutch Chinsurah. It is the closest a Habsburg empire came to Indian territory. In 1733 its neighbours persuaded the Mughal governor at Hooghly to attack; the garrison of fourteen men escaped and sailed for Europe.
- Covelong (Cabelon) · 1722–c.1727
Cabelon, the Coromandel port south of Madras, was Banquibazar's southern counterpart and the second of the Ostend Company's two Indian factories. After the Austrians left it passed to the Nawab of the Carnatic, who fortified it, then to the French, and Clive stormed it in 1752. The harbour then silted.
- William Bolts · charter 1774
A Dutch-born East India Company servant expelled from Bengal for private trading, who wrote the fiercest early attack on Company rule and then got a ten-year charter from Maria Theresa to compete with it. Between 1776 and 1785 he planted four Indian Ocean positions under the imperial flag and lost every one.
- Trieste · free port from 1719
Charles VI opened Trieste as a free port and Maria Theresa built it into the monarchy's outlet to the sea. The second Austrian India venture sailed from the Adriatic rather than the North Sea, which is why a landlocked empire appears on an Indian Ocean map at all. The company was wound up in 1785.
- Mangaluru / Mangalore · 1776–1783
Bolts's principal Indian factory, on the Kanara coast inside Haidar Ali's territory. Mysore's rulers welcomed any European buyer who was not the East India Company, and for seven years the imperial flag flew over a pepper and sandalwood trade at Mangalore with a sultan's permission and no fort. For seven years the imperial flag flew over a pepper and sandalwood trade with a sultan's permission.
- Karwar · 1776–1783
The deep-water harbour at the mouth of the Kali, the best on the coast between Goa and Mangalore, and the second of Bolts's Kanara stations. English, Portuguese and Dutch factories had come and gone here before him; his lasted seven years and ended when the Austrian company's credit did. English, Portuguese and Dutch factories had come and gone here before him; his lasted seven years.
- Baliapatam (Valapattanam) · 1776–1783
The third Malabar station, on the Valapattanam river north of Kannur in the territory of the Ali Rajas of Cannanore — the only Muslim ruling house on that coast, and holders of the Laccadives. Bolts set up beside the existing English and French interests, and the factory closed with the rest.
- Nakkavaram / Nicobar Islands · 1778–1785
Bolts's agents obtained a deed of cession from Nicobarese headmen on 12 July 1778 and named the group the Theresia Islands. The colony's leader Gottfried Stahl died in 1783, a Danish warship arrived from Tranquebar to press the older Danish claim, and the settlers left in 1785. It is the end of Austrian India.