Dictionary of Indian Biography/Bolts, William
BOLTS, WILLIAM (1740?–1808)
Born about 1740: was a merchant of Dutch extraction: being in Calcutta in 1759, he was taken into the E. I. Co.'s service: engaged in private trade, like other civil servants: was Second in Council at Benares, 1764: being censured by the Court of Directors for his private trading under the Company's authority and recalled, he resigned in 1766, quarrelled with, the Bengal authorities, was arrested in 1768, and deported to England as an interloper. In his Considerations on Indian Affairs, 1772, he attacked the Bengal Government: Verelst replied, and Bolts published another work in 1775. He made a large fortune in India, but could not take it away: he spent what he had in England in defending the lawsuits brought against him by the E. I. Co. for some years. He entered the Austrian service, became a Colonel, and founded stations in India for an Austrian Company: these came to nothing: he died in Paris in 1808.