Rare and important: this collection of patents, edicts and royal decrees, includes the foundations of the French Atlantic triangle with decrees establishing both the French West India Company (Compagnie des Indes occidentales) and the Company of Senegal (Compagnie du Sénégal). The work of these two companies facilitated the establishment of plantations, staffed by enslaved labour, on both Saint-Domingue, which the French colonised in 1665, and Louisiana, settled in 1682.
The brainchild of both companies was Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), First Minister of State, under Louis XIV from 1680 until his death. He ran a campaign to centralize the French economy, as can be determined from several decrees in the present collection which run up to his death in 1683.
The French West India Company (1664-1674) was a privileged association endowed with the monopoly, granted by Colbert, of the exploitation of the African and American domains of the kingdom of France. However, it was replaced in 1673 by the Compagnie du Sénégal because it was considered too focused on the development of tobacco and perceived by the planters as a brake on the development of sugar in the West Indies, which relied more heavily on enslaved labourers. The Compagnie du Sénégal was intended to deliver more enslaved workers to the American plantations.
With the establishment of these two companies the French slave trade gathered pace quickly, and just two years later, the first Code Noir was issued.
In addition this work includes the founding decree for the East India Company (Compagnie des Indes orientales), the Edict of Nantes, as well as Colbert’s 1669 edict for the Eaux et Forêts.
Rare: OCLC locates copies at BnF, Lille, Poitiers, Sachsische Landesbibliothek, and Columbia.
