French West India Company

The French West India Company (French: Compagnie française des Indes occidentales) was a trading company of the Kingdom of France founded in May 1664 and eventually closed in late 1674. The brainchild of King Louis XIV's First Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the company was part of an ambitious strategy to compete with the colonial ventures of the Dutch Republic on a global stage, but did not survive the turmoil associated with the Franco-Dutch War in the early 1670s. In Africa, it was succeeded by the Compagnie du Sénégal, and by private traders' operations in America.

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