[1] In June 1604, King Henry IV of France authorized the establishment of the Compagnie française des Indes Orientales,[2] granting the new firm a 15-year monopoly on French trade with the East Indies.
[3] Intended at one point to be based in Brest,[2] the company was entrusted to traders from Dieppe assisted by a Flemish captain, Gérard Le Roy, and a financier, Antoine Godefroy, treasurer of France in Limoges.
The company remained inactive however during the troubles of the regency of Marie de' Medici, and other cities such as Rouen manoeuvred to also obtain trading rights.
One was captured by the Dutch, but the other obtained an agreement from the ruler of Pondicherry to build a fortress and a factory there, and came back with a rich cargo.
[5] In 1642, Louis XIII's minister Cardinal Richelieu created the Compagnie d'Orient, which made France's first small trading establishments in the Indian Ocean at Madagascar, Réunion, and Mauritius.