[INDES ORIENTALES] Dossier sur le différend commercial entre la Compagnie d'Ostende et les compagnies néerlandaises et anglaises des Indes. - Dissertatio secunda De Jure quod competit Societati privilegiatæ foederati Belgii Ad Navigationem & Commercia Indiarum Orientalium ; Adversus Incolas Belgii Hispanici, hodie dicti, Austriaci… - Lettre… à Monsieur Guillaume Pulteney, Membre du Conseil Privé de Sa Majesté Britannique, &c. Dans laquelle on démontre que la Compagnie Imperiale de Commerce & de Navigation, doit être pernicieuse à la Grande-Bretagne & aux Provinces-Unies. Traduites de l'Anglois par F.M.J. 

A collection of three works devoted to the commercial conflict surrounding the Ostend Company, bound together at the time in a single quarto volume, and from the library of the Princes of Starhemberg at Eferding Castle.

Patrice Mac Neny, Refutation des argumens avancés de la part de M.rs les Directeurs des Compagnies d’Orient, & d’Occident des Provinces-Unies…, Brussels, Eugène Henry Fricx, 1723. First edition, 1 unnumbered leaf, 71 pp., published by the printer to His Imperial and Catholic Majesty; not in Goldsmiths’ or Kress. Pencil attribution on the title-page.

Abraham Westerveen, Dissertatio secunda De Jure quod competit Societati Privilegiatæ Fœderati Belgii…, The Hague, Thomas Johnson, 1724. First edition of this English translation, with the Latin text and English version printed facing one another under separate Latin and English title-pages; 2 unnumbered leaves, 63 pp. Goldsmiths’ 6293.

Charles Forman, Lettre de M.r Forman à Monsieur Guillaume Pulteney…, The Hague, Mathieu Roguet, 1725. First edition of the French translation by F. M. J., 2 unnumbered leaves, 28 pp.

Contemporary full mottled calf, smooth spine richly gilt in the grotesque manner, beige calf lettering-piece, decorated paper endleaves and pastedowns, red edges. Spine rubbed, corners bumped. Printed stamp of the library of the Princes of Starhemberg at Eferding Castle on the first flyleaf, with shelfmark “XI 13” in blue pencil.

In December 1722, Charles VI granted a charter to a trading and navigation company established in the Austrian Netherlands. It soon became known by the name of its home port, Ostend, but what immediately alarmed the established maritime powers was its claim to trade directly with the East Indies. The Dutch directors invoked Articles 5 and 6 of the Treaty of Münster; in England, there was equal concern that a new competitor might encroach upon the East India Company’s monopoly.

The first work gives the imperial response. Patrice Mac Neny, an Irish-born jurist established in the Austrian Netherlands and then fiscal counsellor to the Council of Finance, answers the Dutch companies point by point and defends the right of Charles VI’s subjects to trade in distant seas. The second replies almost directly to him: Abraham Westerveen, advocate, counsellor and secretary to the Dutch East India Company, takes up the question on behalf of the VOC in a dissertation published by order of its directors, here printed with the Latin and English texts facing one another.

Two years later, the controversy had widened. Charles Forman addressed William Pulteney and presented the new imperial company as a threat not only to the United Provinces but also to Great Britain. The dispute was no longer merely legal; it had become openly commercial and political, and the freedom claimed by the Austrian Netherlands now collided with the combined interests of the great northern European trading companies.

Pressure eventually prevailed. The charter was suspended in 1727, and the Company was finally sacrificed in 1731 under the second Treaty of Vienna; within a few years, what had begun as a legal dispute had become a diplomatic confrontation among the great maritime powers.

Bound together beneath a single cover, the three adversaries ultimately came to share the same fate: after disputing the future of the East India trade, they took their place side by side in the Starhemberg library in Upper Austria.