Gobineau disliked his father, whom he dismissed as a boring and pedantic army officer incapable of stimulating thought.[9] Lorient had been founded in 1675 as a base for the French East India Company as King Louis XIV had grand ambitions for making France the dominant political and economic power in Asia.[13] As those ambitions were unrealized, Gobineau developed a sense of faded glory as he grew up in a city that had been built to be the dominant hub for Europe's trade with Asia.