Place · Adriatic imperial port · Austria
Trieste
Also known as Triest, Trst, Societa Asiatica di Trieste, Austrian East India Company
The free port Charles VI opened in 1719 and Maria Theresa developed as the Habsburg monarchy's outlet to the sea. Austria's second attempt at an India trade, under William Bolts's charter of 1774, sailed from here rather than from Ostend, which is why an Alpine empire appears on an Indian Ocean map at all.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 45.650, 13.777
Worth knowing
Trieste's Indian venture left almost no Indian trace and a large Austrian one: the insurance houses, the Lloyd shipping company and the grain exchange that made the city. The Società Asiatica di Trieste was wound up in 1785 after Bolts's factories collapsed.
Connections (3)
- Power passed toBanquibazar
Charles VI suspended the Ostend Company's charter in 1727 and abandoned it entirely under the Second Treaty of Vienna in 1731, as the price Britain and the Dutch Republic demanded for recognising the Pragmatic Sanction and his daughter's succession. Austria traded its Indian prospects for Maria Theresa's throne, and it was Maria Theresa who authorised the second attempt from Trieste.
- Imperial administration ofWilliam Bolts
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.
- Imperial administration ofNakkavaram / Nicobar Islands
The Nicobars were claimed for Maria Theresa in 1778 and named the Theresia Islands, the only territory the Habsburg monarchy ever claimed in Asia. Denmark had declared the same group Frederiksøerne in 1756 and sent a warship to say so. Austria's Asian empire lasted seven years, consisted of one island group nobody could inhabit, and was abandoned in 1785.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Trieste”. Walter Markov, Die koloniale Versuche Österreichs im 18. Jahrhundert (1965); Franz von Pollack-Parnau, Eine österreichisch-ostindische Handelskompanie 1775–1785 (1927).
Open Trieste in the repository →