FRENCH PORCELAIN IMPORTS
PROBLEMS
Personal Allowances
Stats on the return cargos are usually based on bills of lading and mainly on auction lists. As far as I
can tell these do not include either personal allowances of the sailing personnel, nor goods carried
free of freightage. These could be very substantial – Dermigny seems to think that in the case of the
EIC most of the porcelain imports were done privately via personal allowances.
Private Trade
Private trade in the later seventeenth century doesn’t seem to distort the stats a lot, since private
traders were obliged to ship on company ships and sell at company auctions. More of a problem is
the private trade of the Saint Malo companies founded around the turn of the century, like the
Companie de la Chine, as far as I can see they only needed to pay an indemnity to the company, so
would not, I think, pop up in the statistics. In the first two decades of the eighteenth century (i.e.
before the establishment of the Law company) the company mainly just leased out privileges, so this
further complicates things. I will have to look into this more, but I don’t think the imports of this
private trade are counted in the statistics.
After the 7 Years War, especially after the loss of the Company monopoly in 1769 private trade again
flourished until the mid 1780s. The Chinese trade especially became very important. This might not
necessarily distort statistics, because private traders were required to put into Lorient, even though
later they were allowed to unload at Nantes. However, I do not know if they are included in the stats
collected by Haudrère and Wellington and I am quite sure that after the official end of the monopoly
private trade did not have to be part of Company auctions, so that after 1770 the statistics from
these (and that is what most statistics are based on) are pretty useless. There is however one
document in the Archives that is a government overview of French trade with India and China
between 1775 and 1780. Wellington quotes this, but, whilst I haven’t had a look at it myself, I’m not
sure whether it gives any detail (i.e. whether it mentions anything on porcelain) and how reliable it
is.
Monopoly trade returned for a few years with the Calonne Company of 1785 but ceased under the
French Revolution.
Smuggling
I think we can be carefully optimistic here. Smuggling seems not to distort the estimates much, since
it appears to have been largely focussed on coffee and fabrics. I of course cannot prove that though.
CONVERSIONS
Haudrère’s proposes conversion of 1,000 pieces per case and 100 per roll seems the most
convincing. He bases this on several different sources in the Archives nationales, the Bibliothèque
nationale, and the Archives of Lorient’s port. For tableware sets he counts 122 for colour and 112 for
blue and white sets. This is based on a different document in the Archives nationales.
These estimates also correspond to those given by Louis Dermigny in his 1764 Commerce à Canton,
who follows Morse in this. There is an earlier estimate by Tournier: ‘La porcelaine des Indes d’après
les archives de la Compagnie française des Indes’ (1953). This comes up with a different count (I
couldn’t get hold of this yet, so I don’t know his count). Also different is the conversion operated by
Wellington, who takes cases and rolls, as they are often quoted interchangeably to have the same
content, equalling 300 pieces. He gives three references for this, though the two from Aix might just
be examples of both being quoted interchangeably, whilst the third, from Lorient, must be his
evidence for the number of 300. I’m not very convinced by that, but a contemporary source (Les
Mémoires de Constant sur le commerce de la Chine) does actually give 300 per case as well.
AVAILABLE DATA & STATS
Auction data is patchy, especially for the seventeenth century. For the ‘golden years’, i.e. 1720-1740
auction lists are available for almost all years.
On the problems in accounting for private trade, especially between 1700-1720 and 1769-1785, see
above.
We can of course neglect private trade and just talk about company trade, but we should bear in
mind that for certain periods the picture would be distorted by leaving private imports out. So to
have reliable statistics the best period (and the one Haudrère focuses almost all his stats on) is 172069.
I think Wellington is probably wrong in his conversions, which would make his overall totals
unusable. In his more detailed lists, he sometimes gives numbers of cases and rolls individually, but
also the individual types of porcelain items when he has them. They are included in the overall
count. An overview of the available statistics is in a separate document. They don’t seem in any way
coherent and thus strike me as rather useless.
Given the problems with the piece count and the hugely varying numbers, it might be more helpful
to look at the value instead. Value at auctions should be fairly easy to establish, Wellington gives
numbers for this, but it might be very difficult to compare this with buying price to establish a profit
margin, as there would be the problem of personal allowances and hence personal purchases
coming in. It should however be fairly easy to establish value of porcelain sales as a percentage of
overall sales value.
PRODUCTION
There are several contemporary French sources on porcelain production in China, the best known
would probably be the Encyclopédie article ‘Porcelaine’ (‘Porcelaine de la Chine, Art de la poterie’)
by Jaucourt, and two earlier letters on the topic by the Père d’Entrecolles in the widely read Lettres
Edifiantes (letters from September 1712 and January 1722, in volumes 12 and 16 respectively),
which are used in Du Halde’s, the Lettres’ editor, Description [...] de l’Empire de la Chine of 1735.
TAXATION
Until 1726 Porcelain still falls under the original regulation of 1664, which (I think) means a tax of 3%
on its value. From 1726 all porcelain imports have to pay a tax of six pounds (livre tournois that is)
per quintal on entry into France. From 1757 this rises to 100 pounds for all but the Company’s
imports, which remain at six pounds (See Haudrère, vol. II, note 260).
In general, a lot of the taxes did not apply to the regions of France falling under the category
‘provinces reputes étrangères’, Britanny for instance. However I’m not sure if this also applied to
porcelain.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beurdeley, ‘Chinese porcelain in French regional museums’, Orientations (Hong Kong), 1994, (25,
12), 50-58
Crick, ‘Trade with France – Le commerce avec la France’, Oriental art, 1999 (45, 1), 52-59
Louis Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident : le commerce à Canton au XVIIIe siècle, 1719-1833 (Paris :
S.E.V.P.E.N 1964) 4 vols
Philipe Haudrère, La Compagnie française des Indes (Librarie de l’Inde, 1989)
Huard Pierre, Wong Ming, ‘Un album chinois de l'époque Ts'ing consacré à la fabrication de la
porcelaine’, Arts asiatiques, 9 (1962), 3-60
D. F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinese export porcelain – Chine de commande (London : Faber 1974)
Tournier: ‘La porcelaine des Indes d’après les archives de la Compagnie française des Indes’, Bulletin
et mémoires de la Société archéologique du département d'Ille-et-Vilaine, 1953 (69) 23-28
Donald C. Wellington, French East India Companies : A Historical Account and Record of Trade
(Lanham: Hamilton, 2006)