Overseas Trade in Early Modernity and the Emergence of Embryonic Private Military Companies

Abstract

Companies chartered for overseas exploration and trade proliferated in Europe during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. A chief motivation for their creation was the profitable trade in spices, silk, valuable metals, and other goods from the Indies.¹ Europeans had long been exposed to these exotic products, but for centuries they had no direct control over the mercantile networks across the Orient supplying them. In a commercial expansion largely implemented by chartered companies, as Europeans started to penetrate these networks, the “world’s centre of trading gravity began to shift from Asia to Europe” (Walvin 1997: 2). Yet gaining control of these commercial routes was not easy. The travel to the Indies could take up to a few years between departure and return, and the risks involved were necessarily high. This persuaded merchants to share risks and organize themselves in large groups, which adopted the form of joint-stock enterprises. These were chartered ventures. During early modern times private trade required governmental consent, which was often granted in the form of a ‘charter’. The charters of overseas trading enterprises allowed companies to raise their own forces to accompany them on the risky voyages abroad. The demands that overseas service imposed resulted in these forces developing into sophisticated instruments of warfare capable of operating both at land and sea, thus requiring the maintenance of armies and navies. More than any of the early modern forms of military organization with a private element, I argue in this chapter that the forces maintained by the overseas trading companies constitute the closest historical antecedent to private military companies (PMCs) and can be regarded as PMCs in an embryonic form.²

The Indies was a term used to designate the nations east of the Mediterranean Sea. A distinction subsequently emerged between the East Indies (Asia) and the West Indies (South America and the Caribbean). In this chapter, I use the term Indies to refer to the East Indies.

I define the PMC as a legally-established multinational commercial enterprise offering services that involve the potential to exercise force in a systematic way and by military means and/or the transfer or enhancement of that potential to clients.