Austrian colonial policy
[1] After seven years of profitable ventures, and much fighting between other merchants in Antwerp and Ghent, Charles VI agreed to its petition of official charter.
These International political pressures ended its extraordinary growth, and in 1727 the charter was suspended, leading to the company being dissolved by 1732.
After the Imperial government's withdrawal of the Ostend Company's charter, the Great Powers accepted the Pragmatic Sanction.
The suspension also allowed the Austrians to sign the Treaty of Vienna (1731) with the British; which allied both powers in the Anglo-Austrian Alliance.
Colonel Bolts had previously been under the service of the British East India Company and was already competent in trade and colonization efforts.
This mission was a part of his colonial ventures in India; and in 1778, Gottfried Stahl and his crew arrived on the ship Joseph und Theresia.
[8] Stahl greeted the natives personally and made a contract with the Nicobarese, where all twenty-four islands were to be signed over to the Austrians.
SMS Novara landed in Car Nicobar, the northernmost island, and its purpose was to promote scientific exploration and included the search for possible penal colonies.
[8] The Austrian government decided against Von Scherzer's recommendations, and closed all potential colonial opportunities.
In 1873, an Austrian expedition, according to its leader Julius von Payer, was sent to the North Pole tasked with finding the Northeast Passage.
Karl Weyprecht, the expedition's secondary leader, claimed the second intended destination after the Northeast Passage was the North Pole.
[10] While drifting within the ice, the explorers discovered an archipelago and decided to name it after the then-current Emperor Franz Joseph.
[12] Two years later in May 1874, Captain Weyprecht decided to abandon the ice-locked Tegetthoff and believed the crew could return to the mainland by sleds and boats.
[10] The Berlin Conference was held to settle matters of African colonization, particularly regarding the Congo territory and West Africa.
Emerich Széchényi von Sárvári Felsö-Vidék, serving as one of the head members of the Conference, was able to procure the privilege of free docking rights in all European-controlled African ports, excluding British South Africa, Italian Somalia, and French Madagascar.
In 1877, a Hong Kong-based merchant sold his rights to North Borneo to the consul of the Austro-Hungarian Empire based in that city, Baron Gustav von Overbeck.
A friend of Overbeck's, William Clarke Cowie, had influence with the Sulu Sultanate, allowing him the January 22, 1878 purchase yet more land to add to North Borneo protectorate.
Following these purchases, Overbeck traveled to Europe, where he then attempted to sell off the newly created North Borneo by promoting it as a penal colony.
Baron von Overbeck, though German, was the Austro-Hungarian consul in Hong Kong, so control of Borneo under an Austrian citizen would define it as a possession of Austria-Hungary.
The society's vice-president, Ernst Weisl, made a quiet deal with Agenor Goluchowski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Austria.
[15] Goluchowski later convinced the Austrian Imperial Council, and Emperor Franz Joseph openly supported the deal.
