Person · Austrian-flag merchant · Austria
William Bolts
Also known as Willem Bolts, Bolts
A Dutch-born former East India Company servant expelled from Bengal for private trading, who took a ten-year charter from Maria Theresa in 1774 and sailed from Trieste under the Austrian flag. Between 1776 and 1785 he planted factories at Mangalore, Karwar and Baliapatam and a colony in the Nicobars.
- Date
- 1739–1808
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 45.650, 13.777
Worth knowing
His Considerations on India Affairs (1772) is one of the earliest sustained attacks on Company rule in Bengal, written by a man the Company had ruined. Every one of his Indian ventures failed; he died in Paris in poverty in 1808.
About the place
Placed at Trieste, the Adriatic port he sailed from under imperial charter; he was born in Amsterdam, made and lost his money in Bengal, and died in Paris.
Connections (3)
- Imperial administration ofTrieste
Bolts's charter of 1774 allowed him to trade to Persia, India, China and Africa through the Habsburg Adriatic ports, and his ships sailed under the imperial flag from Trieste. The venture was private enterprise with a state's colours lent to it, which is why it collapsed when his credit did: there was no navy and no treasury behind the flag.
- CampaignKolkata: Fort William & the Maidan
Bolts made his money in Bengal as a Company servant trading on his own account, was expelled by Council in 1768 and deported, and published Considerations on India Affairs in 1772 — one of the first sustained indictments of Company government, written from inside it. His Austrian venture was an attempt to beat Calcutta at the trade Calcutta had thrown him out of.
- Patronage networkMangaluru / Mangalore
Mangalore was the anchor of Bolts's Indian scheme, and it worked only because Haidar Ali of Mysore wanted European buyers who were not the East India Company and would sell him arms. Austria got a pepper trade on the Kanara coast without a fort, a garrison or a treaty obligation — and lost it when Mysore's war with the Company made the coast untenable in 1783.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “William Bolts”. William Bolts, Considerations on India Affairs (London, 1772); N.L. Hallward, William Bolts: A Dutch Adventurer under John Company (1920).
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