'Musee De La Compagnie Des Indes, Citadelle de Port-Louis, L'Orient, France' - by K J S Chatrath

 

https://www.brittanytourism.com/offers/musee-de-la-compagnie-des-indes-port-louis-en-2115284/

 

 

This museum is the only one of its kind in France. The great trading companies of the 17th and 18th centuries plied their course from Lorient to the East Indies, bringing back exotic and precious cargoes from the other side of the world. With a vast collection of Chinese porcelain, Indian cotton fabrics, Indo-European furniture, models of ships, old maps, oils, gouaches, woodcuts, and miniatures, the museum retraces the voyages of the intrepid sailors of the East India Companies who landed on the coasts of Africa and Asia, setting up such famous trading-posts as: Mocha, Pondicherry, Chandernagar and Canton.

 

 

The museum's collections evoke the various Indian Companies in the 17th and 18th centuries and their relations with Africa, India, China and the Americas. The rooms present the Company of the East and West Indies, the bankruptcy of the financier Law, the Perpetual Company of the Indies and finally the Company of Calonne and the various French counters in India, in China and in Africa. The second part of the museum evokes the shipbuilding of the Compagnie des Indes by models of several ships with, in particular, rooms devoted to maritime routes, health and hygiene on board ships, life on board and goods. transported. Model of the "Soleil d'Orient" ship built at 1/50 °. Models of ships, including the cup of the Comte d'Artois,ship built in 1765, and dioramas of the ports of Pondicherry and Canton. Collection of 450 porcelain from the Compagnie des Indes "Blue and white", "famille rose" and "famille verte". Merchandise and decorative art objects linked to the Indian companies, in particular Indian textiles.