GULF OF OMAN. - Lot 166

GULF OF OMAN. CORSAIRES. COMPAGNIE DES INDES. WAR OF 7 YEARS. Mémoire contenant les faits et les motifs qui semblent pouvoir et être allegues pour et contre la validité de la prise du Vau Lemerry... S.l., 1760. Unsigned manuscript of 4 small folio-sized pages on 2 folded small folio-sized sheets of watermarked laid paper (i.e. 2 bifeuillets). Interesting "Mémoire" divided into 2 chapters, firstly a report and minutes on the seizure of an English vessel, the "Lemerry" or "Merry" in 1759 in the port of Mascatte (Arabian Peninsula, Gulf of Oman), followed by reflections on the political and economic context of this affair. The author of the text, undoubtedly a member of the Compagnie des Indes, revisits the legitimacy of the capture of this vessel by the Count d'Estaing, then an established French privateer, against the backdrop of the 7 Years' War and rivalries between the English, French, Dutch, Moors and "the Mogul power" for economic and maritime domination. Charles-Henri d'Estaing (1729-1794), who became an admiral before dying under the Terror, scoured the Persian Gulf and Sumatra for 2 years, sacking many British trading posts. The author first sets out the "Facts" in his first chapter, describing the capture and then returning to the region's history and context. Explaining that "old debts contracted by the Company of France had banny its ships of the Rade of Suratte [...] The decadence of the Mongol Power had allowed the admiral of Suratte named Sandy to become independent [...] Sandy by his obstinacy made buy this conquest more expensive than the English imagined [...]", he continues with his reflections, "There exists in India a kind of political prodigy which turns completely to the advantage of the English; one always sees subsisting there in times of peace, between all the European nations, a hatred which is not covered with any veil; it resembles an open war; the jealousy of trade inspires it: in times of war the love of this same trade unites the greatest enemies: the soldiers fight, the others love each other: several people [....] who are in charge of business, even officers in the middle of the camps; they all seek, cultivate and sometimes buy at too high a price... Nicolas Ozanne, a painter and draughtsman of the second half of the 18th century, even produced a grisaille-style ink illustration (now in French museum collections).