Royal African Company Monopoly Granted
The Royal African Company was chartered in 1672 with a monopoly on English trade with West Africa, and it transported more enslaved Africans than any other single institution in the history of the Atlantic trade. It succeeded an earlier company that had collapsed after Dutch attacks. Its governor was James, Duke of York — the future James II — and its shareholders included Charles II, courtiers, and the philosopher John Locke, who wrote in the Two Treatises that slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man that it is hardly to be conceived an Englishman would plead for it. Its monopoly covered gold, ivory and pepper, and its business was people. It shipped somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people to the Caribbean and the American colonies during the monopoly years, branded with the letters DY or RAC. Mortality on its voyages ran around twenty per cent. It built and held some forty forts and factories on the Gold Coast, of which Cape Coast Castle was the headquarters. The monopoly was politically fragile. Independent traders — called interlopers — challenged it constantly, and after 1688 the Whig planters of the colonies argued successfully that a monopoly kept the supply short and the price high. Parliament opened the trade to all English merchants in 1698 on payment of a ten per cent duty, and the volume carried immediately increased several times over. The company lost its remaining role and was dissolved in 1752. Its guinea coins gave the currency unit its name.
- Year: 1672 CE
- Category: Economic
