From a Belgian port to Bengal: The forgotten story of Austria’s colonies in India

“That was the first time they had a sustainable coastline. In Belgium, there was the port town of Ostend, which drove them to venture into Indian Ocean trade, following the British (1600), Dutch (1602) and French (1664),” says Bhaduri.

Between 1715 and 1723, 34 ships sailed from Ostend to China, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, Surat and Bengal. These expeditions were financed by international syndicates comprising Flemish, English, Dutch and French merchants and bankers. Their mutual rivalry, however, weighed heavily on profits, prompting the establishment of the Austrian East India Company, chartered by Emperor Karl VI (Charles VI) in December 1722. Also known as the General Imperial India Company, it was a joint-stock trading company modelled on the English East India Company.

Emperor Charles VI (Wikipedia)

The Company established factories at Canton in Bengal and on the Coromandel Coast, and its rapid success soon aroused the jealousy of the maritime powers. It first established a settlement at Covelong. In 1723, with the assistance of the French, it secured permission from the Nawab of Bengal, Murshid Quli Khan, to establish factories at Banquibazar (Bankibazar) and Hydsapour (present-day Ichapur), adjoining settlements on the eastern bank of the Hooghly, just north of present-day Barrackpore.

Explaining why Banquibazar was chosen, Bhaduri says, “This was the belt to be in because it was dotted with all these colonial powers. There was already a trade infrastructure and a ready maritime environment.” The first formal ship of the Ostend Company reached Banquibazar in 1724.

Map of Banquibazar, 1764 (Wikipedia)

The Company initially employed ambitious sailors and entrepreneurs, as well as former personnel from other European trading companies. In his dissertation, Worlds of the Ostend Company in Qing China and Mughal India (1717–1744) (2021), Wim De Winter writes, “The ships’ crews also reflected a mixed maritime labour force, with as much as 41% ‘foreign’ crewmembers comprising French, English, Dutch and Southern Netherlandish nationalities.”

The Company also relied on linguists and translators in Bengal to navigate local commercial and political networks. Armenian and Persian merchants also formed enduring alliances with the Company.

The first phase of the Ostend Company

However, the arrival of the Ostend Company unsettled the existing colonial powers. “A new colonial power entering the region naturally created a great deal of anxiety. Some colonial powers collaborated with the Austrians, while others opposed them. As history tells us, the French, who were rivals of the English, strongly supported the Austrian cause,” Bhaduri says.

The French even interceded on the Company’s behalf with the Nawab of Bengal to secure a tract of land, which Murshid Quli Khan granted at Banquibazar. The English, however, remained deeply sceptical and were determined to stop the Company’s activities.

Pamphlet condemning the Ostend Company as “pernicious” to both British and Dutch traders (left) and a 1723 law forbidding French subjects from investing in the company (right- Wikipedia)

Ironically, the Ostend Company was formally abolished in 1731 by Emperor Charles VI under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna, a concession to Britain and the Dutch Republic in exchange for their recognition of his daughter, Maria Theresa, as heir to the Habsburg monarchy. They, however, remained in Bengal.

The rivalry soon culminated in the first siege of Banquibazar in 1733. The British and Dutch bribed the faujdar (administrator) of Hugli to drive out the Ostenders. The faujdar persuaded the Nawab to order the removal of all fortifications at Banquibazar. When the Ostend Company refused to comply, his forces attacked. The Austrian garrison, comprising just 14 soldiers, was quickly overwhelmed and forced to surrender

The return of Ostenders

The colony was almost abandoned after the Company’s abolition. By the 1740s, however, the Ostenders had begun returning. Bhaduri explains that the settlement “started a second lease of life.” From the 1740s onwards, Ostenders gradually trickled back into Banquibazar and resumed settling there, though the colony continued to witness periodic conflict. One such episode was the second siege of Banquibazar in September 1744.

Share in the Ostend Company, issued 2 September 1723 (Wikipedia)

“Actually, they were collaborating with the Marathas to dislodge both the English and the Nawab of Bengal at that point. Under that accusation, Banquibazar was attacked. The Austrians themselves chose to launch a pre-emptive attack on Hooghly on 22 September 1744, anticipating the siege that was to come. But they lost decisively, and that is when the siege of Banquibazar took place. The Ostenders were completely expelled,” says Bhaduri.

The final phase of an Austrian colony

In the 1770s, the Ostenders once again returned to Banquibazar, retaining control of the settlement until 1794. “In 1775, a new Austrian East India Company was established,” says Bhaduri. Formally known as the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp, it was led by William Bolts, a renowned merchant who had previously served the English East India Company and was well acquainted with the Indian Ocean trade. Bhaduri adds, “He was also the one who tried to set up the first newspaper in Bengal.”

Under Bolts, the Company initially flourished. Bhaduri explains that Bolts secured permission from Haider Ali, the Sultan of Mysore, to establish additional trading posts along the Malabar Coast. In 1778, he also dispatched an expedition that briefly occupied the Nicobar Islands.

However, the Company’s fortunes changed after the Charter Act of 1793, which renewed the English East India Company’s trading monopoly in the Indian subcontinent. “Therefore, all the other players, including the Austrians, gradually fell away after the Charter Act of 1793. The French Revolution further shook the Holy Roman Empire”

Bhaduri summarises this phase in Polycoloniality: European Transactions with Bengal from the 13th to the 19th Century (2020): “The Austrian East India Company gained a second lease of life when, from the 1770s, a series of three new companies was founded in Antwerp and Trieste. The first of these was the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp—also known separately as the Asiatic Company of Trieste, or the Antwerp Company—founded in 1775 under the charter of Karl VI’s successor, Empress Maria Theresa, by Willem Bolts, an old Bengal hand who had served both the Dutch and the English Companies in Bengal in the 1760s. The Company was quite successful to begin with. It re-occupied its earlier colony at Bankibazar and held it till 1794.”

The last European nation to enter maritime trade with India was Sweden. When the Ostend Company was suspended, many of its employees found themselves out of work. “Henry Koning, of Stockholm, took advantage of their knowledge of the East, and obtained a charter for the Swedish Company, dated June 13, 1731. The headquarters of the company were at Gothenburg, and between 1731 and 1778 it sent seventy-six ships to China, three to Bengal, and three to Surat,” notes historian Henry Cabot Lodge in The History of Nations (1906).

“Many suspected that the Swedish East India Company was the formally banned Ostend Company, now trying to resume its trade on the sly under the guise of a Swedish company,” remarks Bhaduri.

Overshadowed by more familiar colonial narratives of the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British is the story of the Ostend Company and their connection between South India to East.