Enlightenment · Europe · Exploration

1664

French East India Company Refounded

1664

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's indefatigable finance minister, chartered a new Compagnie des Indes Orientales with royal backing and a monopoly on French trade east of the Cape. Factories at Surat, Pondicherry, and Chandernagore would follow. France was entering the scramble for Asian commerce sixty years behind the Dutch, but with the Sun King's purse.

More from 1664 Enlightenment

In context

Also in 1664 (4 other events on record)

English Take New Amsterdam · North America · War
Hooke Publishes Micrographia · Europe · Science
Moliere's Tartuffe Banned · Europe · Culture
Great Comet Terrifies Europe · Europe · Science

Before and after in Europe

Before: 1663: Ottoman Defeat at Saint Gotthard
After: June 1665: Great Plague of London

Before and after in Exploration

Before: 1647: Russians Found Okhotsk
After: May 1673: Marquette and Jolliet Reach the Mississippi

Era

Enlightenment (1651–1800), one of 696 events from that era on Saeculum.