Adventurers (17th-18th)

Benoît de Boigne fully embodies the figure of the adventurer. After a career full of ups and downs, he spent almost twenty years in India, where he acquired military glory and prosperity. The town of Chambéry still bears the mark of his journey between Europe and India at the end of the 18th century.

A sudden presence of Daniel Du Jardin [Daniyal du Jardi of Persian records] in the year 1777 in the Kol (Aligarh), Khair, Etah and Farrukhabad regions of North India and a deep silence about him post-1788 mar the obscurity around Du Jardin, which makes it difficult to construct a life sketch of him. Nonetheless, his presence in the late eighteenth century polity and economy of northern India was by no means insignificant.

The adventure of Jean-Baptiste Gentil in India, where he spent twenty-five years, was mixed with successes and setbacks. It all began when the young 26-year-old knight, attracted by the riches of the far-off land, left French territory to enter the service of the French East India Company.