William Bolts was a private merchant of Dutch origin known for his book, The Considerations on Indian Affairs (1772), which detailed the exploitation and despoiling of Bengal

Bengal

Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...

 by the East India Company

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 (EIC) and its officials which began shortly after the Battle of Plassey

Battle of Plassey

The Battle of Plassey , 23 June 1757, was a decisive British East India Company victory over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, establishing Company rule in South Asia which expanded over much of the Indies for the next hundred years...

 in 1757.

Biography

Bolts came to Calcutta in search of fortune in 1759. In the same year he joined the service of the East Indian Company. As a senior merchant, Bolts became a council member at Benares in 1764. He quarreled with the company's authorities on the issue of private trade and remittance. He was dismissed from the Company's service and deported as an interloper in 1768.

Bolts was also a founding member of the Austrian East India Company. He had been invited to form a company by Maria Theresa of Austria. He conducted a number of voyages, sailing from Livorno in Italy to various destinations under an Austrian flag: Mozambique, Macau, Pegu, India and the Nicobar islands. Bolts visited Mauritius in 1781. He was influential in initiating the fur trade on the North West Coast of America in the 1780s.

Author

As an employee of the East India Company, Bolts had seen how Bengal, once a prosperous region, was despoiled and bled white by the East India Company. His observations and experiences were recorded in his book, Considerations on Indian Affairs, 1772. Bolts' work is a unique source for scholars inquiring into the nature of early British rule in Bengal.