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582 Daniele Andreozzi

was a former employee of the English East Indies Company, the
banking group Proli of Antwerp who was its primary sponsor, the fact
that its foundation in Trieste also served to evade the ban imposed by
the European powers on trade with Ostend. The company underwent
complex corporate vicissitudes and disputes between Bolts and the
34
Prolis and went into bankruptcy in 1784 . Since the mid-1750s the
Proli family had owned a sugar factory in Rijeka, the Adriatic’s other
Hapsburg free port, and a trading company - the Privileged Company
of Trieste and Rijeka - interested in sugar trade in Guadeloupe and the
35
Antilles .
Flemish Giovanni Ignazio Verpoorten, one of the company’s
directors, founded a new company in Trieste with capital of four million
florins acquired in the markets of Vienna, Antwerp, Amsterdam and
London, too. His objective was to trade with North America and he
planned to import sugar from Guadeloupe, Carolina and other
American colonies. In 1784 he opened a branch in Marseilles and in
36
1785 in Baltimore . To this was added a new trading company with
North America. In August 1785 the Trieste Gazette announced that
Ambrogio Strohlendorf and captain George Simpson, a Scotsman with
experience in oceanic travel to the Americas, had joined forces with
Domenico Balletti, financier of a company set up to trade with Egypt,
and Carlo Maffei, to create a company trading in this area called the
Austrian-American Company, after having completed two trial voyages
to Philadelphia and demonstrated that direct trade with America could
generate considerable profits and grow in volume. The capital involved

34 W. Bolts, Racueil de pieces autentiques, relative aux affaires de la ci-devant Société
Impériale Asiatique de Trieste gerèes à Anvers, Anvers 1787; M. Wanner, William Bolts
and Societé Imperiale Asiatique de Trieste 1781-1785, «Prague papers on History of Inter-
national Relations» (2004), pp. 57 -73; B.M. Gough, R.J. King, William Bolts: An Eigh-
teenth Century Merchant Adventurer, «Archives: The Journal of British Records
Association», 112 (2005), pp. 8-28; N.L. Hallward, William Bolts, A Dutch Adventurer
under John Company, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1920; D. Andreozzi,
Mediterranean Doubts cit., pp. 69-77.
35 Sav, Savi, 585, 22 November 1750. W. Bolts, Racueil de pieces autentiques cit., pp.
6-9; W. Markov, La compagnia asiatica di Trieste (1775-1785), «Studi storici», 2 (1961),
pp. 5- 6. In 1780 the Proli group planned to start up a new East Indian Company in Tri-
este with a capital of 7 million florins provided by English, France and Flemish investors
(Sav, Savi, 757, 8 January 1780).
36 Sav, Savi, 755, 22 January 1775; K.G. Zinzendorf, Europäische aufklärung zwi-
schen Wien und Trieste. Die Tagebücher des gouverneurs Karl Graf Zinzendorf 1776 –
1782, Vol. 4, edited by G. Klingenstein, E. Faber, A. Trampus, Böhlau, Wien-Köln-Wei-
mer, 2009, 103/2, 43, 43-44, 27 September 1777; W. Markow, La compagnia asiatica di
Trieste cit., pp. 5-6 and 25; A. Tamaro, Fine del Settecento a Trieste. Lettere del barone
P. A. Pittoni (1782-1801), «Archeografo Triestino», LIV-LV (1942-43), 26 April and 12 May
1782.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Dicembre 2018 n.44
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)