India

India is a key stop in Charles Duquet’s maritime trade and a turning point in his thinking about timber. There, he sees an existing exchange route linking luxury goods and provisions across distant markets, then imagines adapting that network to lumber even as opium’s growing demand tempts him toward a faster fortune.

The Voyage and Its Trade

After Captain Verdwijnen had the Steenarend cleaned, repaired, and reprovisioned, the ship departed for the Bay of Bengal. Its hold carried luxury goods for trade as well as fifty flowering plants; crates of lemons and mangoes were aboard to help prevent scurvy. The preparations establish the voyage as an organized commercial undertaking, dependent on the ship’s condition, its stores, and the goods selected for exchange.

In India, Captain Verdwijnen traded some ceramics and silks for cabbages, fruit, and spices, especially cloves and pepper. He also acquired a chest of Patna opium for medicinal trade in Amsterdam. The stop was therefore not simply a destination: it was one link in a route where cargo changed form and value according to the needs of different markets.

Duquet’s Commercial Calculations

The activity in India returned Duquet’s attention to forests. Having come to regard the fur trade as vulnerable to fluctuating supply and demand, he had identified timber as a resource that could support longer-lasting wealth. He believed the forests of New France were vast and replenishing, and saw potential markets for wood used in ships, houses, and heating. The Indian exchange gave him a concrete example of how goods could travel through connected markets, encouraging him to consider a three-corner route for a lumber merchant.

That possibility did not remain purely speculative. When Duquet raised the idea, Verdwijnen explained that buying opium for future voyages might yield better profits because demand for it was growing in China and other foreign traders were already exploiting the market. Duquet agreed that opium was part of what he had in mind. At thirty-two, he was pursuing a fortune through the expanding trade, placing the immediate appeal of profitable commerce beside his longer-term ambition to build enduring wealth from timber.

A Route with Lasting Consequences

India’s place in the episode is defined by the movement of commodities: ceramics and silks are exchanged for food and spices, opium is acquired for Amsterdam, and the possibility of onward trade in China shapes the merchants’ calculations. Duquet reads this network as a template for timber, but the conversation also reveals that his commercial imagination is not limited to the resource he considers more stable. The same interconnected markets that suggest a future for lumber expose him to opium as a profitable alternative.

The scene thus connects Duquet’s early timber ambition to the wider history of extractive trade in the novel. His interest in forests rests on the belief that they can supply wealth over time, while the Indian stop demonstrates how a merchant can redirect cargo toward whatever demand promises the greatest return. India is both a practical trading station and a point at which a vision of permanent timber wealth meets the temptation of immediate profit.