Following the British capture and destruction of the French outpost at Chandernagore in 1757, Mir Jafar, the Nawab of Bengal, opened secret negotiations with representatives of the Dutch East India Company to bring troops into Dutch holdings in the area with the goal of using them against the British.
In 1938, the Metropolitan Government entrusted the French Establishments in India, a region shaken by unrest in the textile mills, to Louis Bonvin who successfully restored social peace and earned the trust of his constituents in the five regions of French India: Pondichéry, Kârikâl, Mahé, Yanaon and Chandernagore.