After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, many French Protestants (Huguenots) fled or faced restrictions, disrupting commercial networks in port cities. Over the following decades, Bordeaux merchants rebuilt and expanded overseas ties, helping set the stage for the city’s deeper involvement in colonial and Atlantic commerce.
By the late 18th century, Bordeaux had become one of France’s important ports in the transatlantic slave trade. Recorded voyage counts in major databases show hundreds of voyages associated with Bordeaux merchants over the long run, illustrating how deeply local wealth and shipping were tied to the forced transport of Africans and the sale of colonial commodities.
From 1701 to 1713, a French company (linked to the Compagnie de Guinée) held the Spanish Asiento, a contract granting rights to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. While Bordeaux’s triangular trade focused mainly on French colonies, this episode shows how state-backed monopolies and war-era privileges shaped the wider slave-trading economy that Bordeaux merchants operated within.
In 1705, Bordeaux received a formal Chamber of Commerce, giving local merchants an official body to represent their interests and advise the state. This strengthened coordination around shipping, credit, and protection of trade routes—key supports for long-distance commerce that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ended parts of the War of the Spanish Succession and transferred the Asiento from France to Britain. This changed competitive conditions in Atlantic commerce and encouraged French merchants—including in Bordeaux—to push harder into trade with French colonies such as Saint-Domingue, where plantation production continued to grow.
Bordeaux’s 18th-century waterfront redesign (including what became the Place de la Bourse) physically showcased the city’s commercial ambitions. The redevelopment improved access between the city and the Garonne River quays, reinforcing Bordeaux’s role as a major shipping hub for colonial goods and overseas ventures.
Between 1742 and 1749, the Palais de la Bourse was constructed to house key institutions such as the Chamber of Commerce. Purpose-built commercial administration mattered because it helped merchants manage disputes, contracts, and coordination—practical needs for financing voyages and trading across the Atlantic.
From the mid-1700s to 1789, Saint-Domingue experienced a major rise in coffee production, alongside other plantation exports. This expansion increased demand for enslaved labor and shipping capacity, tightening the link between Bordeaux’s merchant-financiers and the colony’s plantation economy.
The 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War and forced France to give up large mainland territories in North America, while regaining key Caribbean islands like Martinique and Guadeloupe. For French merchants, this reinforced a colonial strategy centered on high-value plantation colonies—an environment where Bordeaux’s Atlantic trade, including the slave trade, could keep growing.
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly approved political rights for some free people of color in the colonies (specifically those born of free parents). This decision challenged the racial order that underpinned plantation society, increasing tensions in Saint-Domingue and creating new political risks for merchants tied to colonial production and slave labor.
In August 1791, a large-scale uprising of enslaved people began in Saint-Domingue, the most profitable French colony. The conflict disrupted plantation output and trade flows, directly threatening Bordeaux’s merchant networks that relied on predictable shipments of sugar, coffee, and other colonial goods.
In 1791, revolutionary reforms abolished the old Chamber of Guyenne (Bordeaux’s Chamber of Commerce), reflecting suspicion of corporate privileges and traditional merchant institutions. This weakened formal merchant representation at the very moment when war, colonial unrest, and political upheaval were destabilizing Atlantic commerce.
Facing civil war and foreign threats, French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax issued an emancipation decree in the northern part of Saint-Domingue in August 1793. This marked a turning point: the labor system central to triangular trade was being dismantled on the ground, not just debated in Paris.
In 1793, Bordeaux became a center of “federalist” opposition after the fall of the Girondins, but the revolt collapsed and the city came under tighter revolutionary control. Political repression and instability in the port added to the pressures already hitting merchants from wartime disruption and the breakdown of colonial plantation order.
Bordeaux merchants and the French triangular trade (1680–1793)