• 1 Le Corbellier, 1974; Howard, Ayers, 1977.

1“Chine de commande” is a term that has been in use in the West since the nineteenth century to describe the porcelain produced in China in the eighteenth-and-nineteenth centuries for Western markets.1 The term refers to particular goods made according to specifications defining their quantity, quality, shape, dimensions, and decorative patterns (whether partial or total). The concept encompasses different orders, ranging from large-volume orders placed by networks of traders to smaller and more specific orders for an individual final consumer (such as an aristocratic, princely or even royal family).

• 2 Wang Chu-ping 2013.
• 3 Wang He, 2020, 2022; Liu et al., 2022; Yang, 2022.
• 4 They hypothesise that it was in fact Dekui, Superintendent of the Yue Maritime Customs, who took th (...)

3In the following pages, I present a case study focusing on the production order issued by Emperor Qianlong on 9 January 1776. Pioneering work has been carried out by researchers at the Taipei Palace Museum on a gold-painted enamel bowl (gugu 270). Combining stylistic and physicochemical analysis of the objects with an examination of Chinese archives, this research hypothesised that the object was made in France in 1777 (Fig. 1a).2 Recently, using the same combined interdisciplinary approach researchers at the Beijing Palace Museum in Beijing, have identified three more gold-painted enamel pieces made in France: a square shaped teapot (gu 116545), a lu-type teapot (gu 116597), and a weeping basket (gu 116773) (Fig. 1b). In total, ten objects thought to have been made in France based on ten Chinese imperial objects sent to France as models.3 Whilst revealing the exceptional case of French-made painted enamel objects produced in fulfilment of the production order dated 9 January 1776, Chinese scholars have questioned whether Qianlong actually issued the order to have them produced overseas, in France.4

• 6 Taburet-Delahaye, 2019; Notin, 2012.
• 7 Shih, 2007, 2012a, 2012b; Xu, 2010, 2022; Zhao, 2022.

6Painted enamel originated in Europe and the Mediterranean and from the middle of the seventeenth century it travelled eastward to China.6 Imitation production began in Guangzhou and in the imperial and princely workshops in the capital of the Qing dynasty at the turn of the eighteenth century.7 Why did Qianlong choose to place “commandes particulières” with France when the technique of painted enamel had been well established in China for more than half a century? To answer this question, we must first consider another set of questions: under what circumstances did Qianlong place the order? Was he aware that he was placing an order with a foreign country – in this case, a European country in the form of the Kingdom of France? What image of France did he want to convey to the Chinese court?

• 9 Pagani, 2001; Curtis, 2009, Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens, 2012; Kleutghen, 2014, 2015; Knothe, Kleutghen, (...)

10According to recent studies, the list of French products introduced into the Qing court is long.9 It includes instruments of knowledge and measurement (such as terrestrial globes, sundials, cartographic instruments, barometers, and calculators); various machines (for printing and engraving), musical instruments (harpsichords); books; engravings; prints (especially illuminated prints); oil paintings (portraits, landscapes); manufactured products for ceremonial and everyday use (Beauvais tapestries; Sèvres porcelain; enamels from Limoges, Paris, Blois, and Alençon; mirrors and glass from Paris, glassware from Orléans and Rouen; crystal; silverware; spectacles; linen, Lyon silk, wool; gold brocades and threads; perfumes in various forms; jewellery; miniature objects; tableware (forks, glasses, cups, teapot); hardware (scissors, knives, wrought iron ); furniture, food products (chocolate, sweets, wines, alcoholic beverages), natural and semi-precious stones, corals, piastres, etc.

• 10 Morellet, 1767, p. 125-126.
• 11 Berteaut, 1845, p. 68-69; Buti, 2018; Raveux, 2022.
• 12 Personal communication from Philippe Haudrère to the author in an email dated November 7, 2021.
• 13 Dermigny, 1964, p. 770; Schopp, 2018, p. 50.
• 14 Schopp, 2018, p. 48.

11Documents form the 18^th century show that French (along some European) goods shipped to China made a profit margin of only 20% to 30%, while French cargoes returning from China made a profit of 80% to 140% in the years of 1720-1770.10 These calculations were based on data available for low-value identified goods in a cargo. The trade from France to China is characterised by the specificity of the Chinese market for luxury or semi-luxury products.11 Cargoes to China included a significant proportion of high-value items through the port-permis system, of which little or no trace remains in the French archives.12 From the 1760s onwards under the second East India Company, the significant growth of French private maritime trade coincides closely with the increasing importance of trade with China.13 Although it is currently impossible to objectively determine the quantity and profile of French products sold to China through the eighteenth century, scholars agree that it was through private trade that a ship’s crew to China really earned their money.14

• 15 All tribute gifts became the emperor’s personal possessions throughout the eighteenth century apart (...)
• 16 Qi, 2008, p. 125, p. 130-132. For various channels by which Qianlong’s personal collection to be co (...)
• 17 Fu, 1966; Biedermann, Gerritsen, Riello, 2018.
• 18 Zhao, Simon, 2019, p. 17.

12There were at least five regular channels through which French objects could reach the Chinese court:15 diplomatic gifts, tributes from provincial mandarins (especially from the coastal provinces, and from salt commissioners, costumes, imperial manufactures), purchases, requisitions,16 and, finally, “commandes particulières” (“France de commande”). Diplomatic gifts from European countries have been the most studied simply because they relate to exceptional historical events involving significant human, material, and financial resources. In recent years, a growing number of European historical sources have emerged to report these remarkable historical facts.17 As far as China-France relations are concerned, there was no official imperial or royal embassy in the strict sense of the word to formalise exchanges in either direction. Most of the gifts sent from France, whether from the royal family or from high officials and aristocrats, were presented by the French missionaries to the Chinese court in the form of tributes. A study of Chinese archives shows that these gifts were treated in the same way as those presented by the official embassies of other European countries. It is therefore legitimate to consider them as gifts of “informal diplomacy” – a French peculiarity.18

• 19 Ibid., p. 11-12.

13The permanent presence of French missionaries at the court and in the Chinese capital meant that France was able to present gifts on an ongoing basis. The strategy employed by the French missionaries involved a number of effective tricks. First, they arranged for many new missionaries to arrive in the capital, using each arrival as an excuse to present gifts.19 Secondly, they chose particular times (such as a period of illness) and special occasions (such as birthdays) to increase the impact of the gifts. In addition to taking into account the local way of life (its rhythms and rules of etiquette), it is also important to note that the French missionaries acted as both informers for the two courts and as “sorting agents” working to prevent receipt of any French gifts that could cause problems at the court.

• 20 “Les ambassadeurs muets. Exils d’objets d’art français aux Amériques, 1939-1947,” lecture given by (...)
• 21 Espagne, 2013.
• 22 Guo, 2023.
• 23 Hennion, Latour, 1993, p. 21; Latour, 1991.

14In this context of “permanent informal diplomacy,” a large number of French objects were introduced to the court, and they played an active role in strategies of seduction and conquest, operating to some extent as “silent ambassadors” or “mute diplomats.”20 Despite the presence of permanent French intermediaries close to the Qing court, each passage of an object from one cultural context to another results in a transformation of its meaning, a dynamic of resemantisation that can only be fully recognised by taking into account the historical vectors of the passage.21 The ambiguity and even their incomprehensibility of French diplomatic gifts at the Qing court was a part of the gift-giving game.22 Nevertheless, these stories of failed understanding implicitly point to the role of objects “as non-human agents.”23

• 25 The construction of the open access archival database dealed with “Xiyang” and “Falang” is in progr (...)
• 26 Zhongguo, Xianggang, 2005, p. 337-338, p. 392.
• 27 Ibid., p. 439.
• 28 Manning, 1996, p. 181.

18As for the term Yang falang, I would first like to point out the fluctuating nature of the meaning of “Yang,” hence the need to grasp its precise meaning according to textual context. The term “Yang” means “sea,” and is understood to mean any foreign country that can be reached by sea from China. It appears in the Qing palace archives about 9,000 times.25 It included “Dongyang” (“Eastern Oversea”) and “Xiyang” (“Western Oversea”). In all Chinese archives studied in this paper, “Yang” or “Waiyang” (“Foreign sea”) is the equivalent to “Xiyang” In the same ANR database, “Xiyang” occurs about 4,950 times. It can be used as an adjective, a noun to qualify or designate anything related to Europe, a style and a technique, the origin of an object or a person. It can even mean the technique of painted enamel, when used in contrast to the technique of cloisonné enamel.26 When used as a geographical concept, its spatial scope changes according to time and context. During the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662-1722), “Xiyang” included both “Xiaoxiyang” and “Daxiyang.” “Xiaoxiyang” referred to countries situated between China and India, while “Daxiyang” European countries.27 From the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735), “Xiyang” referred only to Europe. Most interestingly, from the 1720s onwards, European ships gradually began to develop private non-European trade, i.e. intra-continental Asian or African trade. In 1724, for example, a ship of the Second East India Perpetual Company made the first round trip between Pondicherry and Canton, carrying merchants from various horizons. And from 1760, the number of French ships sailing between India and China increased considerably.28 This illustrates that the geographical space designated by the term “Xiyang” changes according to the perception of the space in question by Chinese and the historical context. This supports the idea that “Xiyang” can have a specific meaning in a particular situation. I argue that in the production order dated 9 January 1776, the term Yang falang implicitly refers to the painted enamel made in France. In other words, it was indeed to France that Qianlong sent an order on 9 January 1776, to have ten objects from his collection reproduced in France, by ordering the models to be sent to France.

• 29 Pelliot, 1921; Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens, 1969; Torres, 2009.

19The main argument is the hypothesis that the idea of having France as a supplier to the court seems to have gradually emerged in Qianlong’s mind around the time of the first “France de commande,” a series of engravings dedicated to “The Emperor of China’s conquests,” which depict the battles of the final pacification of the Zungharie, renamed Xinjiang at the end of the war, under Qianlong between 1755 and 1759. At the instigation of the French court, this imperial commission from China became a state affair in which the greatest administrative, commercial, artistic, and technical resources were mobilised to fulfil Emperor Qianlong’s wishes. The prints and copper plates were delivered in three batches (in 1772, 1774, and 1775). This “France de commande” was the first (and ultimately only) exceptionally collaborative production involving artistic, technical, human and administrative resources from both sides.29

• 30 Henri Bertin emphasized the role of Jesus, in particular that of the Father Le Febvre, see Cordier, (...)

20No archival evidence supports the hypothesis that the choice of France was initially Qianlong’s decision. Rather, the vice-governor of the Liangguang circuit, who may have been influenced by French missionaries, made the decision in 1765.30 In 1773, Qianlong asked Father Michel Besnoit 蔣友仁 (1715-1774) this question: “Was it not you who, from here (i.e. from Beijing), signaled to your kingdom and wrote for this purpose?” This discussion is irrefutable proof that Qianlong was aware of the fact that the engravings were being produced in France as early as 1773.

• 32 The first Chinese imperial objects sent to Europe for reproduction dated to 1751. This concerns gla (...)

23However, it is unclear whether Qianlong ordered the two poor quality knives that had been returned to Guangzhou to be sent to France. Nevertheless, there is evidence elsewhere of the same relatively systematic opposition between Cantonese and French painted enamel.32 To answer the question of the dispatch of the object-model, let us examine another production order dated 6 March 1775:

• 34 Chang, 2006, p. 45; Wang Guangyao, 2006; Zhao, 2010; Chiang, 2019, p. 139.

24Under the Qing, any production of objects destined for imperial use was subject to the model protocol. If a new item was to be produced, craftsmen were required to make models and submit them to the emperor for approval. In other cases, craftsmen produced their items directly from sketched or supplied three-dimensional models of objects that had been previously approved by the emperor. The circulation of models within the imperial workshops and between the court and the private workshops working for the court was actively encouraged, as “a useful tool” for managing the vast and diverse imperial production “machine.”34 It was in this production order dated 6 March 1775, that Qianlong ordered Dekui, Superintendent of the Yue Maritime Customs in Guangzhou, to have replicas made in “Waixiyang” from a cast iron bowl. He instructed him not to reveal, at the time of the order, that the model came from one of the Palace’s Buddhist temples. This piece of archival evidence provides irrefutable proof that Qianlong knowingly commissioned the reproduction of the bowl in a workshop outside China.

• 35 Some scholars have hypothesized that the Yue Maritime Customs stood in for the imperial Board of Wo (...)
• 36 Delatour, 1803, p. 533.

27From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the Yue Maritime Customs received more commissions to produce enameled objects, while the number of craftsmen working in the imperial workshop declined during the same period.35 The three production orders for enameled objects that Qianlong is thought to have sent specifically to France, show his displeasure at the deteriorating quality of painted enamel objects made in Guangzhou. This systematic comparison between Guangzhou objects and French wares is also evident in the following archive entry, which refers to metal-painted enamel objects: “We get from Canton pretty porcelain snuffboxes; but the Chinese are more curious about those from France, the forms and elegance of which are remarkable.”36

• 37 Ts’ai, 2003.
• 38 Chiang, 2019, p. 138.
• 39 Feng, 2002; Chiang, 2019.
• 40 Xu, 2010, p. 283; Shih, 2007, 2012b, p. 72.
• 41 Dermigny, 1964, p. 770; Schopp, 2018, p. 50.
• 42 Zhongguo, Xianggang, 2005, p. 439.

28Chinese and French archives confirm the fact that quality was the main internal reason (on the Chinese side) for ordering enameled from “France de commande.” Dissatisfaction with the poor quality of the goods produced by the imperial porcelain factor in Jingdezhen is a recurring theme in the archives of the imperial Board of Works and the Imperial House from the earliest days of his reign.37 In addition, from the 1760s onwards, Qianlong paid close attention to the authenticity of the objects entering his personal collection regardless of their origin (Chinese or foreign).38 In other words, Qianlong was particularly concerned with the materiality and symbolism of the objects from his personal collection.39 In addition to the issue of quality, which had already been highlighted in previous works, I would like to draw attention to another parameter, that of quantity. Scholars agree that for the emperor Kangxi, mastery of the technique of painted enamel was of great symbolic value.40 We can therefore summarise the consumption of enameled objects from Kangxi to Qianlong as a fundamental shift from the mobility of the mind to the mobility of things, from curiosity to curiosities, from technique to materiality. Indeed, it was with the gradual development of private trade that the volume of Sino-European trade and Sino-French trade gradually increased from the 1740s and increased more significantly from the 1760s.41 In 1747, Qianlong ordered Canton to stop producing painted enamel objects for the court and to purchase European imports directly.42 Consequently, imitation production under Kangxi may have been intended to compensate for shortage of European enameled objects.

• 43 Chiang, 2019, p. 137; For the case study on the exploitation and the transportation of jadeite from (...)

29When European objects arrived in China in large quantities, placing special orders to Europe for replicas in a purely Chinese style became naturally an exceptional and “active” form of consumption, demonstrating the power of the command maker. Moreover, all imperial production orders acted as part of the imperial system and can be seen as an institutional and logistical “dynamic machine” capable of mobilizing human and non-human resources within Chinese territory. Indeed, the fulfilment of Qianlong emperor’s production order provided the court with an opportunity to project Qing imperial power over human and natural resources, especially when production took place in a peripherical region.43 Can we therefore see in this production order “consciously” addressed to France the ambition of a Manchu monk at the height of his power?

• 44 Dyke, Wills, 2018, p. 5.
• 45 Huard, Wong, 1963, p. 274-275.
• 46 It was known as the Compagnie de Calonne because Charles-Alexandre Calonne, the then Minister of Fi (...)
• 47 AD Finistère, B. 1491, 1572 and 1580. AD Ille-et-Vilaine, I F 1992, interest accounts from 1714 to (...)
• 48 Haudrère, 2005, p. 543; Lespagnol, 1997.
• 49 Dermigny counted 36, see Dermigny, 1964, p. 522-523; Schopp recently counted 39; see Schopp, 2018, (...)

31Achille de Robien came from the youngest branch of a great Breton cloak-and-dagger nobility family. After joining the East India Company, he arrived in Guangzhou in December 1766 on board the Duc de Duras as a supercargo, a privileged position reserved to families of individuals who held senior positions in the company. Like other Europeans seeking fortune in Guangzhou, he arrived there with personal funds to invest in a private capacity.44 Two years later in December 1768, A. de Robien was appointed secretary to the Board of directors of the East India Company in Guangzhou.45 The abolition of the Company’s monopoly by royal decree dated 13 August 1769 paved the way for a period of free trade until the creation of the New India Company by decree of the King’s Council of State dated 14 April 1785.46 It was precisely during this period of private and free trade with China that A. de Robien was able to develop his activities in Guangzhou, most probably through his close relationship with the network of representatives of Breton shipowners and traders. In fact, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the marquesses of de Robien from the principal branch contributed to the armament of the ships used by the East India Company in Lorient and other ports such as Nantes and Saint-Malo.47 The same shipowners and traders continued to sail between France and China after the abolition of the East India Company’s monopoly.48 Their activities increased considerably after the abolition of the state monopoly, with a total of 39 French ships recorded as having docked in Guangzhou between 1769 and 1777.49

• 50 Cordier, 1908, p. 58.
• 51 Halgouët, 1936, p. 363.
• 52 On the matter of the l’Etoile (which is the best documented), see the letter from de Robien to de S (...)
• 53 On the creation of the Consulate of Canton and its history during the free trade period, see Cordie (...)
• 54 Cordier, 1908, p. 54-55.
• 55 He was due to return for his wedding to Jeanne de Haye de Ploue (National Archives, Marine funds, C (...)
• 56 Cordier, 1883, vol. 1, p. 86-87.
• 57 “Letter from A. de Robien to A. de Sartine, Ministre of Marine” dated July 3, 1777 (National Archiv (...)

32In 1771, Achille de Robien joined the Conseil de Direction de Canton, a local government body set up in 1770 as a matter of urgency to oversee French subjects living in Guangzhou and Macao and the passage of French ships. From 4 March 1771, Robien acted as chairman of the board in the absence of the existing chairman. In 1772, he unilaterally signed the new lease for the French “factories” and bought the furniture that had been auctioned off.50 In 1773, together with Vigny and Du Timeur, he changed the status of the Cantonal Council to that of a commercial association, independent of the interests of the French state.51 De Robien again acted as its interim chairman in January 1775. Between January 1775 and December 1776, the date of his own departure on board the Maréchal de Broglie, de Robien acted alone as the King’s Chargé d’Affaires in Guangzhou. He found himself at the centre of several matters of state between France and China, the most well-known of which concerned the favorable treatment granted to the King’s ships when they passed through Macao and Canton.52 A royal decree of 3 February 1776 announced the creation of the Consulate of Canton.53 Pierre Charles François Vauquelin was appointed first consul by a decree dated 20 October 1776 and arrived in Guangzhou just a few months later.54 On 20 December 1775, de Robien tendered his resignation to de Sartine for personal reasons.55 In a letter dated 25 February 1776, de Sartine informed de Robien that Louis XVI had granted him the right to return to France after the arrival of Vauquelin as first consul of Guangzhou in the autumn-winter of 1777.56 However, even before de Sartine’s letter had reached its addressee, de Robien had decided to leave Guangzhou in December 1776 on board the maréchal de Broglie, taking with him a large quantity of goods and possessions, including the object-models provided by the court of Beijing from the production order dated January 9, 1776. On his arrival in Lorient in July 1777, de Robien wrote to de Sartine to inform him of his arrival in France and to request that the transport costs, which he estimated at 1,800 pounds, be paid by the Crown.57 As in other correspondence between the authorities and A. de Robien concerning the reimbursement of his return travel expenses, A. de Robien did not mention in his letter of either the order of the painted enamel objects or the arrival of the Chinese models in France.

• 58 The base bears the inscription “Kangxi yuzhi” (Imperial product of Kangxi’s reign), which is a repr (...)

33The physicochemical analysis of the two objects identified as belonging to the 1776 “France de commande” order reveals how long it took to produce them in France. One of the bowls bears two tax marks in gold on its body: one from the Paris Tax Office, the other certifying the purity of the gold; both of which can be dated to 1777 (Fig. 2a and b).58

• 59 The decree of the King’s Council of State is dated February 2, 1783. The expeditions to China in 17 (...)

34The square shape teapot also bears the same two hallmarks on its gold stand, both of which can be dated to 1783. Production probably began on the return of de Robien to France in July 1777 and resumed in 1783, following the interruption of trade with China as a result of the American War of Independence between 1779 and 1782.59

• 60 Huard, Wong, 1963, p. 272.
• 61 Zhongguo, Xianggang, 2005, p. 638; Yang, 2022, table 7.
• 62 Archives of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Marseille-Provence, H 83, “Compte d’expédition (...)

35In a letter dated 14 June 1785, A. de Robien describes the voyage of three French ships – le Sagittaire, le Triton and le Pondichéry – to Guangzhou from 23 November to 4 December – 1784 without mentioning the delivery of the painted enamel objects associated with the “France de commande” of 1776.60 On 24 January 1785, the Imperial Board of Works acknowledged the receipt at the Court of ten French painted enamels and their Chinese models.61 A comparison of the two archival records suggests that de Robien arranged for the French products and their models to be transported to Guangzhou on one of the three ships. The 1784 China expedition, organised in the same spirit as the 1783 expedition, involved four ships of the French Royal Navy, which were made available to French merchants on the Atlantic coast and the Mediterranean. A total of £6 million was raised through subscriptions from merchants in the major trading cities, of which £845,925 was used to purchase the goods for sale in China, consisting of cloth, linen, coral, mirrors, and glassware. In the detailed account given of the expedition, it is worth noting the absence of twenty objects from the 1776 “France de commande” (i.e. French productions and their object models).62 We can assume that these objects belonged to a member of the crew. In other words, de Robien may have relied on his own transport network and the privileges granted to the ship’s officers, which were outside the control of the French court. It is therefore clear that de Robien, in a private and personal capacity, appropriated the 1776 “France de commande” order for painted enamel objects and took charge of the entire end-to-end process on the French side.

• 63 We cannot rule out the possibility that French products were transported to Guangzhou by an English (...)
• 64 Daudin, 2011, p. 232; Schopp, 2020, p. 32-33.

36With regard to the production order dated 6 March 1775, if production did take place in France, the model seems to have left Guangzhou in the winter of 1775-1776 and arrived in Lorient the following summer, while the finished products seem to have left Lorient in the spring of 1777 and arrived in China in the autumn-winter of 1777. In the autumn-winter of 1777, the Pondichéry 2 was the only French ship to arrive at the port of Guangzhou.63 If the object model arrived to France on board the Pondichéry 2, the production in France could take less than five months. The speed with which the order was processed further supports the hypothesis of the existence of a private, secure, and efficient network to ensure production and transport as part of the “France de commande” process.64 Obviously, it was precisely by relying on this very private network that A. de Robien was able to complete the “France de commande” dated to 9 January 1776 “in a totally private way.” These very complex private networks have received little scholarly attention, as they leave little or no trace in French administrative archives.

• 65 Minard, 1998; Daudin, 2011, p. 289.

37Like other European countries, the main objective of France’s interactions with China was to conquer at least part of the huge Chinese market. Importantly, France was the only country in Europe that was able to develop a specific trade policy – a policy based on the idea of the “commande particulière.” France’s state-sponsored Sino-French strategy was devised by “progressive” senior officials for whom China represented a social, religious, and technological model from which eighteenth-century France could draw inspiration.65 This strategy was at its height in the 1760s and 1780s, having benefited from the previous gradual introduction of commercial infrastructure, administrative bodies (notably the Jesuit missionaries in China, the French Consulate in Guangzhou), and the initiatives of commercial agents based in Canton. These efforts encouraged the Chinese court to place orders with France, focusing on the promotion of the royal factories, engravings from the Imprimerie royale, porcelain from the Sèvres factory, tapestries from the Beauvais factory, mirrors from the royal factory in Paris, and coral from the royal factory in Marseille. Recent research suggests Emperor Qianlong never placed any orders for either Sèvres porcelain or Beauvais tapestries. My case study points out to the Chinese court’s infatuation with enameled objects, both luxury items and “quincaillerie.”

• 66 Yet studies devoted to thus “go-between” social group still focus heavily on their key role in the (...)

38In addition to this material asymmetry, there is another of a human and administrative nature. Although Emperor Qianlong personally commissioned the work, King Louis XVI of France was not involved. In the “France de commande” engraving album, the French Jesus missionaries living both in Beijing and Guangzhou were active artists, informers, advisers, intermediaries, and traders.66 The “France de commande” for French enamel objects highlights the dynamism of French private traders from the coastal regions in Bretagne to whom the French central administration entrusted their implementation. This second group of “go-between” was a group of seasoned and motivated actors from Bretagne on whom the French court relied heavily for high-risk maritime trade, whether in the form of the French East India Companies or during the period of free trade. This paper has highlighted their indispensable role in the exchanges between the Courts of Beijing and Versailles, particularly in the most limited form of exchange, that of “France de commande.”