See also: Dupleix

Joseph François Dupleix (January 1st 1697 with Landrecies - November 10th 1763 Street of the Nasturtiums to Paris) was general governor of the French Établissements of India, and large rival of Robert Clive.

His/her father Francois, a prosperous farmer general, wishes that he become merchant, and, to distract it from its taste for science, to India in 1715 sends it to travel on one of the vessels of the French Compagnie of the Eastern Indies. With the service of this employer, it carries out several displacements in Americas and in India.

In 1720, it is named member of the Superior council of Pondichéry and police chief of the wars. It shows a real direction of the public affairs and discharges its functions with an unquestionable talent. Linking the trade with the administration, he speculates skilfully for his account and acquires in little time a great fortune. In 1730 it is named superintendant French Businesses with Chandernagor, which it raised of its ruin. Under its energetic administration, the city thrives and increases its importance.

In 1741, it marries Jeanne Albert of Castro, widow of the one of her friends Jacques Videns, adviser of the company. This beautiful mongrel intelligent, at the height character, was known by the Indians like " Joanna Begum" and showed itself of a great utility for its husband in the negotiations with the local princes. She will die in 1756. Dupleix remaria in 1758.

Its reputation gets to him in 1742 the general governor position of all the French establishments of India. Its ambition from now on is to acquire for France of vast territories in India. Benefitting from the anarchy produced by the dissolution of the Mongolian Empire, it wanted to make a territorial power of the Company, which had been up to that point only commercial, and projected what will carry out the English Compagnie of the Indies.

For this purpose, it enters in relation to the local princes, and adopts a style of Eastern splendor, within its costume and its framework of life. The British take shade of it. But the danger to their own expansion and their capacity in India is partially avoided because of the reciprocal bitter jealousy between Dupleix and Bourdonnais, governor of the Mascareignes: the island of Bourbon (nowadays the Meeting) and the Mauritius.

When the town of Madras capitulates to the French in 1747, Dupleix is opposed to the restitution of the city to the British, thus violating the treaty signed by Bourdonnais, realizing large sums (1746).

It then sends a forwarding against Fort St David (1747), which is demolished in its walk by the Nawab of Arcot, the ally of the British. Dupleix succeeds in overcoming the nawab, and again tries the capture of Strong St David, in vain. An attack at midnight on Gondelour is pushed back, causing great losses.

In the war which followed, it showed courage and talent, and defended during 42 days Pondichéry against a formidable British fleet and an Army. In 1748, Pondichéry is besieged by the British, but, during the operations, of the news arrive concerning the peace concluded between the French and the British at Aachen.

Dupleix enters then negotiations, whose object is the constraint of the south of India. It sends important troops using one of the applicants of Carnatic and the Deccan. The British, very anxious, are engaged on the side of their rivals.

It was made yield, by an Indian prince whom it had placed on the throne of Deccan, all the territory located between the Krichua and the Cape Comorin, with the title of nabob. Extremely of its successes, it engaged in a continuation of adventurous forwardings misunderstood of the Company of which it was the agent, but perfectly fears English company.

Ruined per so many wars, the conflicts between the two great powers continue in India until in 1754, when the directors of the company, on the faith of truncated reports/ratios, force the government to send in India a special police chief (Charles Godeheu) with the order to replace Dupleix and to return it to France to surprised of the Indians of Pondichery and the joy of English of Madras. These orders are accomplished with an useless brutality. The neutralization of Dupleix was one of the factors which will then make it possible English to launch the 7 year old war (1756/1763) which will give them the remainder of the French colonial empire. What remains work of Dupleix is thus ruined in one moment, and itself is obliged to embark for France, the October 12th 1754. By doing this, the free field was given to England which set up a policy of conquest strictly copied from that of Dupleix. India then made it possible England to conquer the first port of China (HongKong) base of its incipient empire.

Dupleix passed the remainder of its life to be pled against the Company, to which he claimed 13 million, that he had advanced for his service. It spends there the remainder of its private fortune. The Company of the Indies refuses to recognize its responsibilities. The government wants nothing to make for a man whom it persists in looking like an ambitious adventurer. Largest of the French colonial governors dies in the lapse of memory, indigence, misery and humiliation the November 10th 1763 with Paris, without to have been able to be made return justice.

It had published little before its death a Mémoire which made great noise.

“I sacrificed my youth, my fortune, my life, to enrich my nation in Asia. Unfortunate friends, too weak parents devoted their goods to the success of my projects. They are now in misery and the need. I subjected myself to all the legal forms, I asked against the last creditor what is owe me. My services are treated fables, I am treated like the cheappest being of mankind. I am in most deplorable indigence. The small property which rentait me has just been seized. I am constrained to ask for a sentence of time to avoid being trailed in prison.”

See too

• colonial Empire French
• its genealogy on the site geneanet samlap
• its genealogy on the site lemarois.com

Partial source