Ostend Company

The Ostend Company (Dutch: Oostendse Compagnie, or Generale Indische Compagnie, French: Compagnie d'Ostende; or, in full, Compagnie générale établie dans les Pays-Bas Autrichiens pour le Commerce et la Navigation aux Indes) was an chartered trading company in the Austrian Netherlands (part of the Holy Roman Empire) which was established in 1722 to trade with the East and West Indies.

For a few years it provided strong competition for the traditional British, Dutch and French colonial trading companies, notably in the lucrative tea trade with China. It established two settlements in India. Despite its profitability, the company was eventually ordered to close down in 1731 after the British exerted diplomatic pressure on the Austrian government, fearing the company's effects on their own traders. Its disestablishment was made a precondition for the Treaty of Vienna and for creating an alliance between the two states. The Ostend Company can be considered the first attempt by the Holy Roman Empire to monopolise trade with the East Indies; the second being the much less-successful Austrian East India Company, founded in 1775.

The success of the Dutch, British and French East India Companies led the merchants and shipowners of Ostend in the Austrian Netherlands (part of the Holy Roman Empire) to want to establish direct commercial relations with the Indies. The trade from Ostend to Mocha, India, Bengal and China started in 1715. Some private merchants from Antwerp, Ghent and Ostend were granted charters for the East India trade by the Habsburg government of the Austrian Netherlands, which had recently gained control of the territory from Spain. Between 1715 and 1723, 34 ships sailed from Ostend to China, the Malabar or Coromandel Coasts, Surat, Bengal or Mocha. Those expeditions were financed by different international syndicates composed of Flemish, English, Dutch and French merchants and bankers.

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