L’Économie Politique de Joseph Dupleix : mercantilisme, autorité, et deuxième guerre carnatique, 1751-1754

Abstract

This article examines a series of divisive debates over the political economy of colonial trade within the Compagnie des Indes, the privileged corporation that held a monopoly on commerce in India during the eighteenth century. It looks specifically at the fallout from the Second Carnatic War (1751-1754), a string of local succession conflicts to which Company administrators committed French troops in the hopes of gaining territorial concessions and tax revenues. As the military effort turned against the French, employees in Asia sought to justify their engagement in this conflict by criticizing the Company’s reliance on commercial monopoly. Opponents to the conflict, by contrast, developed a competing model of colonial political economy to push for the expansion of corporate regulation in India. This article thus illustrates the contested and uncertain foundations of French commercial theory in the eighteenth century, suggesting that the development of economic knowledge was closely tied to the personal politics of various colonial officials.