A post by Arundhati Virmani, Ehess, Centre Norbert Elias, Marseilles.
This is an expanded version of the paper Arundhati presented at our Paris conference in July 2015.
French naval and commercial
strategies in the Indian Ocean and relations with India and South East Asia is
hardly a neglected subject. A long list of impressive studies has given rise to
some major publications among which Philippe Haudrère –
La compagnie française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Les Indes
savantes, 2005);
Les Français dans
l’Océan indien, XVIIe-XIXe siècle (Rennes, PUR, 2014.) – or Jacques Weber –
Les établissements français en Inde au
19e siècle, 1816-1914 (Paris, Librairie de l’Inde, 1988, 5 vols.),
or
his Pondichéry et les comptoirs de l'Inde
après Dupleix: la démocratie au pays des castes (Paris, Denoël, 1996).
Yet, the archives of the Chamber
of Commerce and Industry of Marseille, remain relatively little exploited by
historians and researchers working on both maritime trade with India and on the
Indian ocean. No doubt, the large collection of primary sources dealing with
the French colonies in the “Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer” (ANOM) of
Aix-en-Provence nearby have played a part in dwarfing the Marseilles Chamber of
Commerce archives. In fact, the latter contains rich source material that
includes correspondence and reports on trade links between Marseille and French
colonies in India.
History
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Marseille-Provence
is one of the oldest institutions of its kind. It was founded in 1599 with the
objective of keeping track of French maritime trade and eventually protecting
its interests. It became an autonomous body under Louis XIV in 1650, breaking
away from the control of municipal authorities and thus acquired larger powers
covering matters related to the harbor and navigation, the protection of
merchant ships, and the affairs of the local economy. The development of this
institution can be followed in Octave Teissier, La Chambre de commerce de Marseille, osn origine, sa mission, création
des premiers comptoirs français dans les échelles du Levant, développement du
commerce général et de la richesse nationale, Marseille, Barlatier and
Barthelet, 1892, XXII - 411p; Louis Bergaasse, Notice historique sur la chambre de commerce de Marseille
(1599-1612), Marseille, Barlatier, 1913 [7] – 269 p ; La Chambre de commerce de Marseille,
1599-1949; le passé, le présent, l’avenir. Préface d’André Cordesse,
Marseille, G. Lang, 1949, 110 p; Gaston Rambert (ed.),
Histoire du commerce de Marseille [des
origines à 1789], published by the Chamber of Commerce of Marseille, Paris,
Plon, 6 vol., 1949-1959 (t. 1. L'antiquité, by R. Busquet. Le Moyen Age
jusqu'en 1291, by R. Pernoud.--t. 2. De 1291 à 1423, by É. Baraticz. De 1423
à 1480, by F. Reynaud.--t. 3. De 1480 à 1515, by R. Collier. De 1515 à 1599,
by J. Billioud.--t. 4. De 1599 à 1660, by L. Bergasse. De 1660 à 1789, by G.
Rambert.--t. 5. De 1660 à 1789; le Levant, by R. Paris.--t. 6. De 1660 à
1789; les colonies, by G. Rambert)
It also acquired some authority in
matters that touched diplomatic relations – the French consulates in the
Mediteranean area–, and especially custom and trade questions related to the
French colonies. In the 18th century, other such institutions
developed in France before they were deemed unconstitutional. Thus, the CCM was
suppressed in 1791 in a general movement but later revived by Bonaparte in
1803. In 1872, the Chamber created a specialized library open to the public.
The German invasion of the non-occupied zone led to a transfer of the more
ancient collections to Puyloubier, about 46 kilometres from Marseilles, with
another more important part of the archives being deposited in the cellars of
the Palais de la Bourse in Marseilles. But because of lack of space in the
cellar, the rest of the historical archives remained in the third and fourth
floors of the Palais. Despite a succession of disasters, such as an avalanche
of obus shells during the battles in the city on 23-27 August 1944 and a fire
that destroyed much of the collections, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of
Marseille still remains a centre of resources not only for the Mediterranean
but for France’s larger maritime relations, recognized by the International
Council of Archives and Unesco. It constitutes an important research tool for
economic matters relating to Marseille, its harbor and the ship traffic that
passed by this port. Above all, its archives, located in the centre of the
city, are very easily accessible to researchers.
Main sources
for India
There is no major
published guide to the sources relating to India or South Asia. Some printed
works nonetheless are helpful indicators. A published numerical inventory of
sources before 1801 can be found in Jean Reynaud’s Répertoire Numérique des Archives, vol. 1. Archives antérieures à 1801. Fonds particulier de la chambre, Marseilles,
F. Robert et fils. 1947. This contains a list of the commercial activities
between Marseilles and the French Indian empire from the 18th
century onwards. A good secondary source to consult on this is Louis Dermigny, Cargaisons indiennes, Solier et Cie,
1701-1793, Paris, Sevpen, 1960, 2 vol. The Roux collection covers 1728-1843. A
second inventory for the 19th and 20th century archives. Archives
of shipping companies like Messagerie Maritimes
also form part of the collections.
The French entered the trade on
the Coromandel coast in 1672 and seized Pondicherry two years later, becoming
part of a complex commercial environment that included the Dutch and the
British. French commercial investment in Pondicherry developed considerably in
the 1720s and 1730s. The French Compagnie
des Indes was headquartered in Pondicherry. From the 18th
century onwards the export of goods, grains, cereals or cloth from India formed
a significant part of the trade of the French empire. These geographical
movements of commodities represented important shifts of capital. Their
trajectories show the linkages between the different parts of the French empire
and the broader trade rivalries.
Pondicherry was connected to the
French port of Lorient, to Bordeaux and to Marseilles, where goods like indigo
and dyes that formed part of the stock waiting transhipment to French colonies
in Africa were received. In Senegal for example, these goods were exchanged for
slaves to be sent on to the Caribbean. The P&O ships linked Marseille to
Calcutta since 1852. The Chamber of Commerce sources shed light on these economic
links and exchanges.
The Pondicherry Chamber of
commerce was founded in 1848. Maritime trade between Pondicherry and France
increased spectacularly under the Second Empire, exporting indigo, sesame,
cottons; Pondicherry was also the point of departure of coolies. Exports would
fall in the 1870s with the discovery of aniline dyes that impacted indigo trade,
and the coolie trade was finally prohibited and suspended between 1876-1885. But
Pondicherry was the centre and port for goods coming from the Bengal coast,
Orissa and Coromandel. Its important population of weavers led to the
establishment of a “filature mécanique” by MM. Blin and Delbruck. Free trade
dealt a blow to this industry with Belgian, or English toiles proving to be
cheaper than toiles coming from French India. The Chamber continued to fight
for a modification of customs duties on goods coming from Senegal. But then
Pondicherry was saved by the sudden
spurt in the export of peanuts. This was of particular interest to Marseillais industialists
producing oils, soaps etc. With the opening of the Suez canal Marseilles
suddenly moved closer to Pondicherry. A good part of the correspondence deals
with these issues and the commercial competition between the Britsh East India
Company and the French, or the traffic of goods between India and France, in particular
Marseilles.
An important set of sources
contain correspondance concerning trade relations with India, letters received
by the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce from French colonies in India. File
YC/27/01 contains letters and reports dealing with the beginnings of the French
occupation of Pondicherry in the 17th century. YM/03602 deals with the
displacement of local populations from south India to the French colonies;
ZD.02258 contains reports from French representatives in India on Anglo-French
rivalry in India and in the Indian ocean. ZD/06548 holds the correspondence of
the Council of Chandernagor from 1745-1757. Finally, the file YM/07491 lists
the principal merchants and businessmen of French India. Printed material
includes a history of the French installations in India. This can be found in
ZD/14194, whereas file YG/19/01 contains the demands of the Pondicherrry chamber
of commerce and the different products sent by the Chamber of Commerce to the
colonial exhibition of Marseilles in 1906.
The MQ series from 1801-1993 contains sources for the 19th
century on goods being exported, on custom duties negotiations and French and
Indian trading houses involved in exporting sesame, cotton, indigo.
MQ 54/15 1801-1964 contains
correspondence on French trade with Bengal, relations with Surat in 1816 and reports
on the potential of Bombay. Correspondence between the two Chambers of
Commerce, Marseilles and Pondicherry, stress the potential of a huge Indian
market for French industrialists and the advantages for France in developing
her position in the Indian Ocean. They seek to mobilise the Marseilles trade
institutions to win support and financial banking from the home government for
favorable custom tariffs. They provide information both on the French trading
companies dealing with India and Indian trading houses conducting commercial
exchanges with France. This is an interesting source as well for more
contemporary trade relations after 1957. It would be relevant for researchers studying
trade links between Marseilles and India before and after the Second World War
and contains information on French attempts to invest in India after 1947.
MQ/429 holds correspondence concerning French establishments from
1817 onwards. There are 78 documents in this file dealing with the movement of
textiles, oil, rice, the peanut trade from the Coromandel, which was of
particular interest to oil producers in Marseille. The file has detailed
catalogues of goods from India, their quantity or prices. There is much that
will interest the economic historian here about the financing of trade.
Equally, for historians interested in studying the 18th, 19th
centuries from the perspective of global connections, there is much on the
traffic of coolies, and the displacement of Indians to other French colonies
like Antilles or Guyanne.
Demands for Pondicherry to develop
railway links between this colony and the South of India to promote the peanut
trade and break the isolation of the French colonies can interest researchers
keen on exploring regional and broader trade networks and how regional
economies and markets were being fashioned.
The Roux collection, L.IX-Fonds Roux 1728-1843 is part of the Annexe collections of the
Chamber of Commerce. The archives of several merchant houses and many of their
account books were destroyed before being collected by the Chambre de Commerce.
It contains around 8271 letters about food products, raw products and
manufactured goods. The trading house, Maison Roux, functioned till 1843 with a
peak activity before the Revolution. François Roux was a merchant based in
Marseilles. Four societies were successively formed and run by three
generations of the family. Their activities covered a large range of goods:
arms, insurance, banking. These sources are of particular interest for economic
history of the 18th century. They shed light on the activities of
businessmen in this period and specifically on Marseille’s trade. There is a
rich collection of letters from ship captains and correspondents in different countries,
London, Italy, Leghorn, Messina, Naples, Venice, Portugal…
Files 1.027-1.029 in this collection deal with prices of goods in
Marseille, of wheat and grains, oils, soaps, rice, dyes, drugs, spices,
cottons, silks. File 1.030 - 1.036
contains the exchange rates in Marseille from 1797-1819. There is an
alphabetical filing of all its correspondents. It contains more than 5000 index
cards and an inventory by county and city, with the list of its correspondents.
French ships taking European goods to Asia returned with cowry shells and
Indian textiles valued by West Africans. On the African coast, traders
exchanged these Asian products for slaves who, in turn, were sent to France’s
New World colonies. There are references to ships transporting Indian coolies
to French colonies passing through Marseille. The Asian-European trading
relationship was a fundamental link in the African slave trade.
Papers of important merchant
houses engaged in trade, maritime insurance or import of goods and raw products
form an important part of the Chamber of Commerce archives. They can offer
further information about the Asian-European trade that was an essential
element of the triangular slave trade, known as the “circuit trade” between
Europe, Africa and America. The slave trade was as deeply entwined with
Europe’s New World trade as it was in the Asia trade. When for example, the
slave ship Diligent left France for
the West African coast in 1731, over half its cargo consisted of cowry shells
and various types of Indian textiles. Cowry shells served as the major currency
along the West African coast, and came from the Maldive Islands near India. Ships
belonging to the Company of the Indies returning from India and China would
stop in the Maldive Islands and purchase cowry shells, which they used as
packing material to cushion crates of porcelain and other goods. Cowries served
as ballast to keep the ship steady as well. Because the porcelain, tea, spices
and textiles of Asia were of higher value than the European trade goods that
the ships brought from France, returning ships had a great deal of empty space
in their holds that was filled with cowry shells. Once back in France, cowries
were removed and repacked in barrels to be shipped to West Africa.
The Asian trade was of course
vital to the slave trade. In 1706, when the French East India Company closed
down, French slave traders were cut off from access to cowry shells and Indian
textiles and found it impossible to remain competitive in the slave trade. A
consortium of merchants raised over a million livres to start a company to
replace the defunct French East India Company. They requested authorization
from the French Council of Commerce, citing the difficulties they were having
in obtaining products of Asia that were vital for the slave trade, mainly cowry
shells and Indian textiles. Their request was denied and the government instead
formed the Company of the Indies, which was given a monopoly over both the Asia
trade and the slave trade. The trade with Lorient and Asia was a central part
of this chain. The Fonds Roux contain
files on auctions of goods by the Company of the Indies from 1729-1810. (L. IX.
1037) It features a list of goods coming from the Coromandel coast and Bengal
and the details of public sales of indigo and cotton.
Historians interested in specific commodities like
Indigo or Indiennes and painted
textiles would do well to consult Series
H that deals with questions of general trade. For instance, one such report
is made by M. Guillaume Febvrier, commissioner of the ship Le Fleury in 1738. Files H 139 and H 203 deal with the 17th
and 18th centuries, particularly the trade of indigo (1684-1739) and
textiles (1686-1790). H/195 deals with the silks of India and China from
1686-1791.
A further set of sources dealing with private
merchant houses in Marseilles trading with India includes the correspondence of
the Rocca society (L/19/14/123) with merchant societies in India, more
specifically Calcutta (Graf & Banziger, 1852-54; Oliva and Casella,
1851-1852; Robert & Charriol 1854-1857). Besides the fonds Roux mentioned
above, this contains a list of the principal merchants and industrialists of
French India, mainly Pondicherry: YM/07491 (Pondicherry 1936). listing the
names, location, products (textiles, links, indigo, matches…)
Printed sources include reports of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce
for 1864-65 (Bombay, Pearse and Sorabjee 1866), and for 1864-68. The Bengal
Chamber of Commerce (Calcutta, Cones and Co. 1871) reports are available for
the 19th century.
A more heterogenous group of files
contains reports on Indian traditional medicine: (ZC/02686; 02687), the hygiene
of whites, the miscigenous and Indian population in Pondicherry (ZC/04383), the
Civil law of Hindus (ZC/04048; ZC/04049). There is even a file on the French
expedition to the Himalayas in 1935, and the Chambre de Commerce’s financial
involvement in this adventure.
Whilst these sources are a rich
field for the economic historian of the early 19th century, researchers
working on contemporary business history will find material to study Indo-French
relations, trade exchanges and technical cooperation from the 1950s onwards. Files
on the industrialisation of India (REVUE/CCM/1945/02). REVUE/CCM/1949/5:
Archives Historiques, deals with the development of the chemical industry, INDE
A/C/000562 contains information on the visits of Indian delegations of the
Franco-Indian Chamber of Commerce to the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce.
MQ54/17 contains
reports on trade with India from 1979-1993. These relate to the correspondence
on projects of possible collaboration between the Indian Chamber of Commerce
and the National Council of French business leaders, between Indian business
groups and the chamber of commerce Marseilles. In particular, a report prospecting possibilities of doing
business in India and Bangladesh in March and April 1979, addressed by A.L.
Paul (Dept. of foreign trade, CCIMP, Marseilles) to President Bourdillon of the
CCIMP Marseille, proves piquant reading. He notes that the Indian market
presents various possibilities, but rarely suitable to PME’s. Indian firms are
interested in big enterprises, and all cooperation, the realization of
projects, administrative and fiscal hassels, delays of return on investments,
constitute big risks. The Indians reproach the French for being too expensive
and not too active, in comparison to the British, Germans, Japanese and South
Koreans who are very effective actors in the field. Americans are not too well
perceived. Russians are discrete and participate only in the public sector. He
concludes by saying that the torrid heat, added to the electricity cuts that
stop the air-conditioning and lifts and the short working day 10-4p.m. and
often only 10-2 p.m for some banks and businesses interrupted by lunch, prove
to be very trying.
Finally, there is a small
collection of iconographic sources: some German, French and British maps of 18th,
mid and late 19th century and views of Pondicherrry.
