charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly

There were two disincentives to trade in this area – piracy and the Dutch. Slaving was resumed by the Guinea Company (founded in 1618) after about 1640 to provide cheap labour for the new Barbados sugar plantations, but this venture always struggled and its assets were acquired in 1657 by the East India Company, which had little interest in the Gold Coast. Courtesy of the RijksmuseumĪpart from three slaving voyages led by John Hawkins in the 1560s, the English showed little interest in West Africa. View of the market place in Cape Coast, with Dutch traders marked by the letter ‘O’.

One reason for this was the prevalence of diseases to which the visitors were prone, and as a result the Guinea Coast was known as the ‘white man’s graveyard’. The local rulers remained in control of inter-continental commerce and European agents had no power beyond their trading posts. What did not happen (until centuries later) was imperial expansion in West Africa. Rulers also discovered that selling human beings to foreigners was a lucrative way of getting rid of criminals and other undesirables. Some Europeans would pay for them with guns, which bolstered the power of the chiefs and so fuelled yet more inter-state war. These states had always been slave-based (though slaves traditionally had better lives and more rights than those who ended up in Muslim towns or Christian plantations) but now they discovered that prisoners of war were valuable ‘trade goods’. The impact of new markets opening up for their produce (gold, ivory, dyewoods, hides and pepper) had complex results for the various chiefdoms it drew competition, promoted war and it encouraged slave-raiding. They established trading posts at places like El Mina and Cape Coast Castle.

It was the lure of gold that drew the Portuguese and later other merchants to open up direct maritime links with the people of what they called the ‘Gold Coast’ from the late 15th century onwards. Behind him stand ten pages holding shields and swords decorated with gold. He sits in a domed pavilion around which stand ten horses covered with gold-embroidered material. The king adorns himself like a woman with gold round his neck and forearms and he puts on a high cap decorated with gold. Stories of wealthy African rulers (similar to those of El Dorado) spread by trans-Saharan traders, amazed those in Europe: The trade was dominated by Berber and Arab entrepreneurs. For thousands of years, some agricultural communities living on the southern fringes of the Sahara had supplemented their income by exploiting deposits of an easily accessible mineral highly prized by the merchants who visited them from across the desert – gold. Let us start in West Africa for, after all, that was the land destined to be most affected by the development of commercial links with Europe.

Charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly