Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
Wikipedia
The Royal African Company was a slaving company set up by the Stuart family and London merchants once the former retook the English throne in the English Restoration of 1660. It was led by James, Duke of York, Charles II's brother.
Originally known as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, it was granted a monopoly over the English slave trade, by its charter issued in 1660. With the help of the army and navy it established trading posts on the West African coast, and it was responsible for seizing any rival English ships that were transporting slaves.
It collapsed in 1667 during the war with the Netherlands – the very war it started by having company Admiral Robert Holmes attacking the Dutch African trade posts in 1664 – and re-emerged in 1672, having been merged with those of the Gambia Merchants' Company into the new Royal African Company, with a royal charter to set up forts, factories, troops and to exercise martial law in West Africa, in pursuit of trade in gold, silver and slaves.[1]
In the 1680s it was transporting about 5,000 slaves per year. Many were branded with the letters 'DY', after its chief, the Duke of York, who succeeded his brother on the throne in 1685, becoming James II. Other slaves were branded with the company's initials, RAC, on their chests.[2]
Between 1672 and 1689 it transported around 90,000-100,000 slaves. Its profits made a major contribution to the increase in the financial power of those who controlled London
In 1698, it lost its monopoly. This was advantageous for merchants in Bristol, even if, like the Bristolian Edward Colston, they had already been involved in the compound. The number of slaves transported on English ships then increased dramatically.
The company continued slaving until 1731, when it abandoned slaving in favour of trafficking in ivory and gold dust. Charles Hayes (1678–1760), mathematician and chronologist was sub-governor of Royal African Company till 1752 when it was dissolved. Its successor was the African Company of Merchants.
The Royal African Company's logo depicted an elephant and castle.
From 1668 to 1722 the Royal African Company provided gold to the English Mint. Coins made with this gold bear an elephant below the bust of the king and/or queen. This gold also gave the coinage its name—the guinea.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Kitson, Frank. (1999) Prince Rupert: Admiral and General-at-Sea. London: Constable, p.238.
- ^ Micklethwait, John, and Adrian Wooldridge. The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea. New York: Modern Library, 2003. ISBN 0-679-64249-8.
- ^ K.G. Davies, The Royal African Company, (Taylor & Francis 1999) p. 65, n. 4.
[edit] External links
Annotations
-
“Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa,”
Founded 1660, and re-founded in 1663, by Prince Rupert and James, Duke of York, the company was granted monopoly trading rights in western Africa for 1,000 years. Apparently this company’s activities were initially restricted to Gambia because of the need to negotiate with the pre-existing rights of the Guinea and East India Companies. The charter of 1663 for the first time explicitly mentioned the slave trade among the Company’s interests, in 1662 it undertook to supply 3,000 slaves annually to the West Indian colonies. The Company’s first decisive act was to dispatch a naval expedition to Africa under Sir Robert Holmes, which established a fort on James Island in the Gambia (1661) It was this that lead to it becoming embroiled in conflict with the Dutch.
In consequence of the charter of 1663 the Company extended its activities east of the Gold Coast, into an area that was becoming known as the “Slave Coast,” where it established a trading station at Allada in 1663; slaving voyages were also undertaken to New and Old Calabar, further East. The suggestion that the slave trade had now become the Company’s main pursuit is unwarranted. Gold remained the main object of trade; in 1665 the Company estimated its annual revenues from gold sales at L200,000,as against only L100,000 from the delivery of slaves to English Colonies, with a further L100,000 from other commodities (ivory, wax, hides, dye-woods and pepper.) African gold was coined in ‘guineas,’ stamped with an elephant as the Company’s symbol, from 1663 onwards.The company made an ambitious start, claiming to have established (or re-established) eighteen factories in Africa and dispatched over forty ships to trade there in the first years of its operation …..
[I leave the Holmes expedition to Pedro]
The losses sustained at de Ryuyter’s hands (1664-5) ruined the company, which did little trade after1665. The Company licenced private traders from 1669, leased the Gambia trade to a separate company of Gambia adventurers in 1669, and was liquidated and replaced by a new Royal African Company in 1672. Initially the Gambia Adventurers maintained their rights, but in 1678 they were bought out by the Royal African Company. By comparison with the Royal Adventurers, the new company was dominated by merchants rather than courtiers, though James, Duke of Yoork (and later as King) remained titular Governor.
Short summary of:-
P.E. H. Hair and Robin Law
The English in Western Africa to 1700 (with select bibliography)
in Nicholas Canny ed. The Origins of Empire. British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century [Oxford History of the British Empire Vol 1] Oxford: OUP, 1998 pp. 241 - 263, @ pp255-7.