Hanauian India

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Map of Hanauisch India 1669
Johann David Welcker: Allegory of the acquisition of Surinam by Count Friedrich Kasimir von Hanau in 1669. (1676) Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Inv.-Nr. 1164.

Hanau India was the name of a contractually agreed but never realized colonial project in the county of Hanau in what is now French Guiana and northern Brazil .

In July 1669, on behalf of Count Friedrich Casimir von Hanau in Amsterdam , the Hanau privy councilor Johann Joachim Becher signed a contract with the Dutch West India Company to take an area of ​​3,000  Dutch square miles (almost 100,000 km²) from it as a fief . The aim was to achieve a positive trade balance with a colony in order to offset the financial needs of the County of Hanau ( mercantilism ). There was planned Kingdom Hanauisch India to set up and the Indians to friendly and civilized to make people. The contract provided for extensive rights for the Dutch West India Company, e.g. B. a transport monopoly for traffic with the colony.

The area of ​​the planned colony was by far larger than the county of Hanau itself (approx. 44 Dutch square miles / almost 1,500 km²). From the beginning there was a lack of opportunities to fund such a project and there was a lack of colonists. The project ended in a financial fiasco for the county of Hanau. An attempt to sell it to the King of England in 1672 did not meet with approval. The project finally failed with the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War in the same year.

Web links

literature

  • G. Ulrich Großmann (Ed.): From German hardship to courtly splendor. 1648-1701. DuMont, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-7701-4457-0 , cat no. 102 (exhibition catalog, Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum , April 2 - August 16, 1998).
  • Ferdinand Hahnzog : Hanauisch India then and now. Verlag W. Dausien, Hanau 1959.
  • Ferdinand Hahnzog: The calculation of "New Germany" or "Hanauisch India". In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter . 17, 1960, pp. 93-114.
  • August Ludwig von Schlözer : New Germany or Hanauisch India and D. Becher. A record-based report from the former empire of the Count of Hanau in South America, 1669 . In: August Ludwig von Schlözer: Correspondence mostly historical and political content . Part 2 = booklet 7-12. Vandenhoeck, Göttingen 1777, pp. 237-260.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b See: Gisela Graichen, Horst Founder: German Colonies - Dream and Trauma . Berlin, 2nd edition 2005, p. 23; and: Hahnzog: Hanauisch-Indien , p. 21.

Coordinates: 4 ° 45 ′ 36 "  N , 53 ° 24 ′ 0"  W.