Innovation & Wealth › Trading companies & early capitalism › Sugar plantations and the Atlantic slave trade
Royal African Company
chartered 1660; rechartered 1672· Company or fortune· Companies & fortunes
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
An English chartered company with a royal monopoly on West African trade; historians count it the largest single shipper of enslaved Africans.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
Founded in 1660 as the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa and rechartered in 1672, it was led by James, Duke of York, the king's brother. It traded gold, ivory and above all enslaved people from forts such as Cape Coast Castle, branding many captives with its initials. By about 1731 it had shipped roughly 150,000–190,000 Africans; estimates vary. Investors included John Locke and Edward Colston. Independent 'interlopers' undercut it, and Parliament ended the monopoly in 1698.
Impact on society and the economy
It tied the Stuart crown and London investors directly to slavery; its African gold gave the 'guinea' coin its name. Its fall showed monopoly giving way to an even larger open slave trade.
How we know
Company records in Britain's National Archives (series T 70), voyage data in SlaveVoyages, and William Pettigrew's 2013 study Freedom's Debt. Colston's Bristol statue was toppled in 2020.
Still debated
Exact numbers are uncertain because records are incomplete; historians also debate whether its decline reflected planters' demands, politics after 1688, or plain inefficiency.
Connections (2)
▸Royal African Company shipped enslaved Africans for Sugar plantations and the Atlantic slave tradeWell documented
The connection
Plantations in Barbados, Jamaica and the Chesapeake needed ever more workers. The company bought captives at its West African forts, chiefly on the Gold Coast and in the Bight of Benin, shipped them across the Atlantic and sold them to planters on credit. Planters complained of high prices and short supply, which fed demands to open the trade.
When and how
Cape Coast Castle and other West African forts, and Caribbean ports such as Bridgetown and Port Royal, about 1672–1731.
How we know
The company's own records in Britain's National Archives, and voyage data compiled in the SlaveVoyages database.
Debates
Exact numbers and deaths are uncertain where records are missing; how much the company, versus independent traders, drove the sugar boom is debated.
▸Royal African Company was a slave-trade monopoly granted under MercantilismWell documented
The connection
Under mercantilist logic the slave trade was a strategic national business: it supplied labor for colonial sugar and tobacco, which earned exports and customs revenue, and it had to be kept from the Dutch. The Stuart crown therefore chartered a single company with a monopoly. In 1698 Parliament opened the trade to independent merchants, who paid a 10% duty.
When and how
London, 1660–1712; Charles II and James, Duke of York; the 1698 Africa trade act, whose 10% duty lapsed in 1712.
How we know
The charters, the Navigation Acts and the 1698 act survive; William Pettigrew's Freedom's Debt (2013) traces the political fight over the monopoly.
Debates
Whether doctrine or royal profit and patronage drove the charter is debated; the 'free trade' that replaced it greatly expanded British slaving.