William Bolts
[3] Bolts himself declared that his father was a native of Heidelberg and therefore claimed to be "a subject of Germany", although at the time of this statement he was attempting to get out of legal problems with the Company.
[a] Later, he was appointed to the Company's Benares (Varanasi) factory, where he opened a woolens mart, developed saltpeter manufacturing, established opium plantations, imported cotton, and promoted the trade in diamonds from the Panna and Chudderpoor (Chhatarpur) mines in Bundelkhand.
[14][15] In 1775, Bolts offered his services to the government of the Holy Roman Empire, putting forward a proposal for re-establishing Austrian trade with India from the Adriatic port of Trieste.
His proposal was accepted by the government of Empress Maria Theresa, and on 24 September 1776, Bolts sailed from Leghorn (today's Livorno) in the dominions of Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the younger son of the Empress, to India in command of a ship under the Imperial flag, the former Indiaman Earl of Lincoln, renamed the Giuseppe e Teresa (also called Joseph et Thérèse or Joseph und Therese).
During his voyage out, he obtained Brazilian cochineal beetles at Rio de Janeiro, and transported them to Delagoa Bay, thereby predating the introduction to Bengal of this insect for the making of scarlet dyes and carmine.
[20] When it learned of Bolts's venture, the East India Company instructed its officers in Bengal, Madras and Bombay to "pursue the most effectual means that can be fully justified to counteract and defeat" him.
He visited Hyder Ali at his capital, Seringapatam, where he was granted permission to establish trading factories in the Nawab's Malabar Coast dominions at Mangalore, Karwar and Baliapatam.
In consequence of Bolts' action, the Imperial company had established a trading factory on the island of Nancowery, headed by Gottfried Stahl who was accompanied by five other Europeans.
Proli also disagreed with Bolts over the importance of the China market: Proli wanted to concentrate exclusively on that market while Bolts urged the equal importance of India as Austrian commodities, such as mercury, lead, copper, iron, tin, and vitriol, could find sale there, in contrast to China where only Spanish silver dollars were accepted in return for Chinese products such as tea, porcelain, and silk.
[27] At an audience with Emperor Joseph II in Brussels on 28 July 1781, Bolts and Proli agreed to the transformation of their association into a share company, and in August, Bolts surrendered his charters to the new Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp for the Commerce of Asia (Société Impériale pour le Commerce Asiatique de Trieste et d'Anvers).
[28] The Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp was opened to public subscription in August 1781 to raise, nominally, half its capital in one thousand shares.
It consequently suffered chronic lack of cash and had to resort to short-term loans and bottomry bonds (for which the ships themselves were the collateral) at a premium of 30 to 35 per cent.
Attempting to seize the opportunity to make good profits, the Proli group sent five ships to Canton: the Croate, the Kollowrath, the Zinzendorff, the Archiduc Maximilien, and the Autrichien.
Disastrously, a sixth ship, the Belgioioso, carrying a large amount of silver specie for the purchase of Chinese goods, foundered in a storm in the Irish Sea soon after departing Liverpool, where she was fitted out, on the voyage to Canton.
Matters came to a head in January 1785 when the Company suspended all payments, and shortly afterward it was declared bankrupt, bringing the Proli banking house down with it.
"[35] In February 1785, in the unfolding bankruptcy of the Imperial Asiatic Company, the Aigle Impériale was seized by creditors at Cadiz, where she had gone to load Spanish dollars to pay for tea and other goods in China.
Under the name Aguila Imperial she sailed for the Philippines under the command of Francisco Muñoz y San Clemente, departing Cadiz on 23 January 1786, calling at the Cape of Good Hope and Java, and arriving at Manila on 9 August of that year.
[39] After Bolts returned from India in May 1781, he developed the idea for a voyage to the North West Coast of America to engage in the trade in sea otter furs to China and Japan.
[40] Bolts' ship, the Kaunitz (not to be confused with the Proli group's vessel of the same name), arrived back at Leghorn (Livorno) from Canton with this news on 8 July 1781.
The opposition of Bolts' Belgian former financial partners and now rivals in the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp was also a cause of its not going ahead, and in the autumn of 1782, it was abandoned.
Reflecting the origins of the enterprise, their instructions gave them the option (which was not taken up) to take ship from Acapulco in Mexico to the Philippines, thence to the Sunda Islands in the Dutch East Indies, the coasts of Bengal, Coromandel and Malabar, and the Iles de France and Bourbon (Mauritius and Reunion).
He had an encouraging response from Naples, where King Ferdinand's Minister of Commerce and the Navy, General Sir John Acton, wanted to promote the kingdom's maritime trade.
Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, Directeur des Ports et Arsenaux, stated in the draft of the memorandum on the expedition he submitted to the King: "the utility which may result from a voyage of discovery ... has made me receptive to the views put to me by Mr. Bolts relative to this enterprise".
[57] The ship's arrival from New York at Dover, England, was reported in The Daily Universal Register of 15 September, and the same newspaper published an extract of a letter from Ostend dated 24 September that said: "The Count de Belgioioso, on account of the East India Company, is arrived here from Bengal and China, her cargo consists chiefly of piece goods, with only a few chests of the finest teas, and one of spices, from Ceylon, at which island they touched on their way home".
[59] Having cleared Ostend in November 1786, the Imperial Eagle made port at the Sandwich Islands in May 1787 and reached Nootka in June, from whence she traded southward for two months along the American coast.
[60] The expedition was apparently profitable, as an article in The London Chronicle of 21 June 1788 reported that, "After taking in his cargo, &c. &c. Captain Berkeley [Barkley] proceeded to Macao, where he disposed of his furs at an amazing price".
[61] It was originally intended that the Imperial Eagle would make three voyages to the North West Coast, Japan, and Kamchatka, but when she reached Canton after her first season she was sold after threats were made from the East India Company for breaching its monopoly.
[62] In November 1786, Bolts was given a contract by King Gustav III of Sweden to discover an island off the coast of Western Australia, where a Swedish colony and trading post could be established.
