William Bolts, a Dutch Adventurer under John Company. By N.
L. Hallward. (Cambridge University Press. 15s. net.) —Clive on his last visit to Bengal had to discipline the servants of the East India Company and restrict their private trading which injured both the Company and the natives and caused endless friction. Mr. Hallward's careful study of the career of Bolts illustrates the abuses with which Clive grappled man- fully. Bolts, £hough a Dutchman by birth, was taken into the Company's service in 1759 because he had had a com- mercial training. He learned Bengali, went into partnership with two members of council at Calcutta and engaged in land speculations and trading ventures by which in a few years he made £90,000. He tried to evade the Company's orders, forbidding their servants to pursue the inland trade or to take presents from chiefs, and was obliged to resign his post in 1766. He then set himself to create trouble for the Company. He involved Verelst, Clive's successor, in litigation at home which ruined that unlucky man. He engaged in intrigues with the Nawab of Oude and with the French. Finally he persuaded the Empress Maria Theresia to patronize an Austrian East India Company which he formed at Trieste, and he caused the British Company much anxiety by his efforts to open trade with Western India at a time when, during the American War of 1776-83, it was inexpedient for us to add Austria to our many enemies. Bolts died poor in 1808. He was evidently a clever and ingenious man without any moral sense, and the Company must have regretted bitterly their mistake in having anything to do with him.
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