TRAVEL REPORT FELICIA GOTTMANN
SUMMER 2013
Overview
14-17 July
Saint Brieuc:
Departmental Archives and Municipal Library
17-21 July
Lorient:
Service Historique de la Défence Archives (Navy Archives which
include East India Company archives)
21-27 July
Nantes:
Departmental and Municipal Archives
4-18 August
Avignon:
Municipal and Departmental Archives of Avignon, with trips to
Orange (municipal museum), Aix (Departmental Archives), and
Valence (Departmental Archives)
18-24 August
Paris:
National Archives, Archives of the Foreign Ministry, and trip to Caen
(Departmental Archives)
Findings
Saint Brieuc
The main reason for going to Saint Brieuc is their collection of Vincent de Gournay’s papers at the
municipal library. A central figure in the administration of Commerce in the mid eighteenth century,
he and his circle were instrumental in bringing about the turn towards liberalisation at that time
which notably resulted in the abolition of the ban on calicoes (1759) and that of the East India
Company’s trade monopoly ten years later. His papers are an important source to understand these
developments but they are also an invaluable mine of information and statistical data on France’s
foreign trade, especially in the Levant.
Whilst there I also visited the departmental archives, which held some interesting materials on the
forbidden trade and consumption of Asian textiles.
Lorient
Lorient has some of what remains of the French East India Company archives. Here I found some
particularly interesting materials on the smuggling of Asian textiles and the use of the pacotille, but
also some fascinating materials on the Company Auctions (see below).
Nantes
Nantes was where company auctions were held until the 1730 and it always retained a strong link to
the company. Its municipal and departmental archives have particularly rich materials on the
Company Auctions, which give an excellent overview of the goods traded and sold early in the
eighteenth century (see below). They also hold a particularly large collection of materials on seizures
and prosecutions which helped me get a clearer understanding of the practices of maritime
smuggling and illicit consumption in the region.
Avignon
Avignon was an exclave. Although located in the Provence region it was a papal territory and thus
not subject to French legislation. Hence it became a hotspot of silk and tobacco production and
especially of textile printing all of which were then smuggled into the kingdom on a very large scale.
This ended in the 1730s after a boycott by France led to a concordat between the Pope and the
French king, by which Avignon and the surrounding region, the Comtat, agreed to cease its textile
printing and tobacco production in exchange for a yearly indemnity paid by the French tax farmers.
The protests and documents drawn up in the process of this are held at the Avignon municipal and
departmental archives and give wonderful details both over the methods and scale of the
production and about the mechanisms and perceptions of smuggling from the region.
The south west of France will be a focus of my book, because illegal consumption and production
was particularly prevalent, not only due to the situation of Avignon, but also of Marseille, a free port
and centre of the Levant trade, and of Orange, another city in the vicinity, which for part of the
period still belonged to the Dutch rulers and was thus also an important entrepôt for smuggling. It
was also one of the centres of early legal production and the local museum holds a great collection
which I visited. Since they are in between curators I have been unable to get in touch with anybody
there about picture rights but I will keep trying.
Whilst in Avignon I was able to consult the inventories of several other departmental and municipal
archives (none of which are online, sadly), and I then went to two of them in particular, Aix, where I
found a lot more material on smuggling and arrests for consumption, and Valence, the seat of the
first and most important commission set up to try smugglers. The materials I found there will permit
me to give a quantitative analysis of the importance of Asian textiles in cross-border smuggling – and
what I found so far was rather surprising to me.
Paris
In Paris I first went to the National Archives to finish my work I had begun on the minutes of the
Council of Commerce, which as a central node in the government’s efforts to gather information on
the usage, trade, and production of Asian and Asian-style textiles is invaluable. It is also one of the
best sources to trace the shift towards an attitude in favour of liberalisation.
I also went to the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where I found wonderfully detailed
material about the functioning and particular goods of the French trade with the Levant, an
important source of both Indian and Indian-style cottons for France, which I had more or less
sidelined in the first few years of my research.
From Paris I also travelled to Caen to visit the departmental archives there which have an important
collection of pamphlets concerning the debate about the lifting of the calico bans in the 1750s,
which will be a central aspect of my monograph.
Things of interest for other team members
I spent a good deal of the research focussing on the particular functioning of the French East India
Company of the French Levant trade and on debates about political economy, which, whilst crucial
for my own monograph, are perhaps not so very interesting for the project at large. However, I came
across a few things that I thought would interest everyone and I would be happy to give more details
if anybody wished. These are:
1) Lots of ‘Affiches de Vente’: Sales notices which give an overview of the goods on sale at the
upcoming auctions. One of them is annotated and explains what those goods are, especially
some quite outlandish Asian textiles, so really quite useful (for Chris and Helen I thought
perhaps?). They also list lots of Chinese goods that, if I understand correctly, were in the EIC
and VOC’s cases only sold privately, such as wallpapers, lacquer furniture, and even watches
(Meike?). In some cases that may be because of the way that pacotilles worked: they were
permitted and then sold as part of the company’s auctions, but it’s interesting too, that the
French Company seems to have sold quite a few finished goods, such as embroidered
corsets, neckerchiefs, stockings, etc. Again, in part that may have been because goods seized
in France (i.e. all printed textiles and those white cotton and muslin goods that were not
marked with the official French EIC seal) were for a period sent to the Company to be sold at
auction (for re-export abroad).
2) I also have taken pictures of a few of the actual sales catalogues, many of which are
annotated so give not only the details of the lots but also the name of the buyer and the
prices. They are huge however and I have only taken samples, but particularly of those
things I thought would be of interest to others on the project, of Indian textiles (Chris and
Helen?), and of Chinese silks, especially their colours (Hanna!).
3) I have quite a bit of material about smuggling practices now, both by land, but also via thirdparty ships and through company employees, so if anybody is interested give me a shout.
4) Finally, I came across something that totally surprised me and I thought would be really
important for all of us since we keep saying how interlinked all these companies were: I have
evidence that for several years in both the 1740s and 1750s the French Company went to
buy goods from the VOC, the EIC, and also in one instance from a merchant in Copenhagen
to then sell them at their own auctions in France. This included both coffee and drugs but
also textiles. This really was news to me, did any of you come across anything like that
before?