Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux (1701-1781).

Arrest du conseil d'estat du Roy, au sujet du dépôt des marchandises des indes, de la Chine & du Levant qui auront été saisies.

[Paris?], no name, 15 April 1727.

Plano, printed on one side. With a woodcut Royal French coat of arms.

A hitherto unknown large broadside that instructs the regulations for the storage of seized illegally imported overseas goods. Any clerk who fails to hand in seized goods to the designated depot will be fined 100 livres. This broadside is not held by the BNF, nor any other library as far as we could find. There exists a rare quarto edition of this decree, which is only recorded at the BNF (FRBNF33689346).

In the 1720s, the French Compagnie des Indes, also known as the French East India Company, faced a major financial crisis caused by the "Mississippi Bubble" or "South Sea Bubble." The crisis was primarily caused by speculative investments and a burst of the stock market bubble. As a result, the French Compagnie des Indes went bankrupt. Afterward, its operations were reorganized, and the company continued to exist in a diminished form until it was formally dissolved in 1769. The broadside that we offer here is a fine example of how the French Crown effectively asserted the crown-sponsored monopoly after the collapse and subsequent reinstatement of the Compagnie des Indes. The broadside is signed in print by Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Louis XV's Secretary of State for the Navy and Colonial Affairs from 1723 to 1749.

Condition: two small tape remains on verso, otherwise in excellent condition.

Literature:

Gregory Mole, Privileging Commerce: The Compagnie des Indes and the Politics of Trade in Old Regime France, diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016.