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SIR NICHOLAS CRISP'S GUINEA COMPANY

439

separate traders had been disastrous to the prosperity of the English interest in West Africa, and second that this trade was conditioned by "peculiar circumstances" which needed careful attention. Among these circumstances was the difficulty of preventing the market for English goods from being ruined, when, as frequently happened in an unregulated trade, a number of vessels chanced to anchor at the same time off the English ports on the coast. The consequent glut resulted not only in a lowered price for English goods, but also diminished the return in gold for the merchandise carried out, and gold was the great object of the trade. Another particular condition was the need of forts on the coast to protect the English traders against molestation by their European rivals, the Portuguese and the Dutch. These conditions suggested the value of the monopolist Company which had built forts and carried on a regular trade in spite of Dutch opposition, though both activities had demanded a very heavy expenditure, and the Adventurers were stated to have lost £100,000. In investigating the Company's claims to consideration the Council of Trade also took into account its propositions for the future. The Adventurers engaged to provide an ample supply of commodities for barter, to regulate trade with the Dutch, and to undertake a new search for gold, of which they engaged to bring to England £10,000 worth in three years.

In consideration of the past services of the Company and its promise of future assistance to national commerce the Council of Trade agreed to allow it to continue as a limited monopoly in spite of the outcries that had been made against such grants. The resulting privilege was restricted to a fourteen years' tenure of land lying twenty leagues on each side of the two chief trading places established by the Company, Cormantine on the Gold Coast, and a port in Sierra Leone, and the Council suggested that a like privilege of forty leagues' monopoly should be granted for fourteen years in respect of any new discovery by the Company on condition that the place should be fortified and secured "to the interest of the Commonwealth". This report of the Council of Trade was sufficiently favourable to encourage the Company to continue its activities, but the undertaking was made dangerous by Prince Rupert's enterprises in preying on vessels off the African coast. Though gold appeared in the Council of Trade's report as the object of the African trade it was under the aegis of this Company that attention was transferred from gold to slaves. In 1651 some of Crisp's associates undertook a voyage to the Gambia with the declared object of securing a cargo of slaves, and had it not been for the continuance of the conflict between Commonwealth and Royalists at sea it seems possible that the English slave trade might have been established under Puritan rule. The hazards of the war were, however, too great and in 1657 the Company sold the remaining years of the lease of the Gold Coast to the East

India Company to whom the forts were valuable as providing ports of call for its ships on the way to the East.1 Though the Commonwealth government failed to establish an English slave trade a beginning had been made, and the way was prepared for more successful measures under the later Stuarts.

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The Restoration Government in making arrangements for the African trade did not at first specifically promote the slave trade. In 1660 a charter was granted to a group of merchants under the title of "The Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa", who received the privilege of incorporation, and the right to hold the land and islands of West Africa from Cape Blanco to the Cape of Good Hope for 1000 years. The chief trade for which the Company was incorporated was that of "discovering the golden mines", and the other commodities to be procured were ivory, dye-woods and hides, no allusion being made to a trade in slaves. As there was uncertainty about conflicting rights to parts of the coast granted to the Adventurers it was provided that these should be investigated before the new Company's privileges were fully confirmed to it. The rival claims were those of the East India Company, whose lease of the Gold Coast still had five years to run, and those of the holders of the Crisp patent. As the East India Company's rights were based on an arrangement made in the Interregnum they were disregarded, and only the claims of the Crisp Company were considered. These were finally dropped and after the expiration of Crisp's patent a new charter was granted to the Royal Adventurers. The two years of trading from 1660 to 1662 were responsible for great changes both in the organisation and objects of the Adventurers. The new charter of 16634 gave them the title of "The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa", and increased their territorial privileges, the boundaries within which they were to have a monopoly being extended on the north to reach the borders of Morocco, while the Cape of Good Hope remained the southern boundary. In keeping with their greater privileges more elaborate arrangements were made for the government of the Company, which was to have a governor, sub-governor, deputy governor, court of assistants and an executive committee. The greatest change was in the object to be pursued by the Company. The needs of the Plantations for labour had become increasingly insistent, and the Royal Adventurers therefore decided to make the slave trade their main pursuit. It was expressly provided in the new charter that they should have the "sole, entire and only trade" in negroes on the West African coast. This was the first English charter in which definite statement was made of the slave trade as a recognised branch of

1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1574-1660, p. 383.

2 For the charter see Carr, p. 172.

3 Zook, G. F., The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, p. 14.

4 Carr, p. 177.

FRENCH, DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON GOLD COAST 441 English commerce, and from this time onwards until the Abolition Act of 1807 it was ranked as a valuable national asset, essential to the progress of the commercial empire. This first slave-trading company had a brief life, as the expense of setting up an effective organisation was disastrously heavy, owing to the rivalry of the other European traders, which necessitated elaborate outlay for naval and military defence upon the coast.

The Dutch had ousted the Portuguese from many of the best trading places, and like them claimed to exclude all other nations, and the French had gradually secured a strong position in the Senegal region. Both French and Dutch entered into conflict with the English, and a triangular struggle took place. In 1663 after the revision of the Royal Adventurers' charter an English force was despatched to the Guinea Coast for the protection of the forts and trade.1 Admiral Holmes, in charge of the expedition, found a severe conflict going on in the Gambia with the Dutch, who were attacking the English traders from their base on the island of Goree, which was captured and then garrisoned by the Company's servants. Retaliation for this came in 1664, when de Ruyter recaptured the island.2 The struggle was also waged on the Gold Coast where the Dutch fort, Cape Coast Castle, surrendered to Holmes in 1664. de Ruyter was less successful on the Gold Coast, and Cape Coast Castle remained with the English, though they lost their fort at Cormantine. In the peace of 1667 their right to share in the African trade received formal recognition, and the transfer of Cape Coast Castle was confirmed.

About the same time the third European Power in the contest, the French, were advancing their power under the care of Louis XIV's able minister, Colbert. In 1664 a French West India Company was established, the successor to a series of unsuccessful companies. This organisation, which was supported by the French Government and active in the Senegal region, became a serious rival both to English and Dutch. Well-defended forts were essential for a trade so strongly contested, and this expense taxed the resources of the Companies. At the same time the Adventurers could not satisfy the demands of the West Indies for negroes, and petitions that the West Africa trade should be thrown open were heard from 1668 onwards. In addition there was a burdensome war with interlopers, and the profits of the Company were insufficient to meet its liabilities. Being so heavily burdened by debt the Royal Adventurers were willing to surrender their charter in 1672,3 and a new Company, "The Royal African Company of England", immediately followed them, receiving a royal charter in the very year of the Adventurers' dissolution. The privileges granted to this Company were in many points similar to those of its predecessors. Its monopoly grant

1 Zook, p. 18.

2 Ibid. p. 20.

3 Ibid. p. 27.

* Carr, p. 186.

covered the same extent of the African coast and the same period of 1000 years, and prescribed a similar form of government. This Royal African Company had the longest life of all the English African companies; it was the most powerful, and did more for the extension of English authority on the coast than any of its predecessors or than its immediate successor. The years of its greatness were from 1672 to 1687, in which time the Company planted forts and factories on the coast and up the Gambia River, made treaties with the natives, ensured English trade in spite of Dutch and French rivalry, exported large quantities of English manufactures to Africa, and increased the prosperity of the West Indies by supplying them with some 5000 negroes a year. During the years of its success the history of this aristocrat of African Companies is the history of the English slave trade and of the English West African settlements.

Its chief assets, received from the Adventurers, consisted in two forts, one in the Gambia, and one on the Gold Coast (Cape Coast Castle), and six factories, for which £34,000 was paid to them.1 A bold policy of extension was decided upon by the new Company, and the circumstances of the time were propitious for the English, since Colbert's Compagnie des Indes occidentales was dissolved in 1672 as a complete financial failure, while the Dutch West India Company which had been founded in 1621 was for the moment hopelessly crippled by internal quarrels and by the expenses of rivalry with France. On the coast everything was favourable for an energetic English Company, and the plantation demand for negro labour was increasing. The difficulties of the Dutch West India Company had shown that unity and sound organisation were necessary for successful trade, and the Royal African Company paid no little attention to the subject. Its charter had laid down the outlines of a scheme of government, but many additions had to be made to this machinery in the interests of efficiency and despatch of business.

The Court of Assistants was a hard-working body, meeting from five to nine times a month to decide on general lines of policy, and to consider reports from sub-committees which it appointed for special matters. The Court kept firm control over all affairs connected with the slave trade or with its holdings in Africa. The coast service was entrusted to the versatile overseas servants of the Company, typical of the seventeenth century, who were required to be at once expert in trade and able to negotiate a treaty or wage a war. No doubt as to the subordination of the coast government to that of the Court of Assistants was entertained. The chief officer on the coast was an "agent general", and the position was so little sought

1 "Some observations on tracts taken out of the Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations" (c. 1708), Brit. Mus. 8223, e. 4/12.

p. 81.

Chemin-Dupontés, P., Les Compagnies de Colonisation en Afrique occidentale sous Colbert, 3 Lannoy et Vander Linden, Histoire de l'expansion chez les peuples modernes, II, 190.

METHODS OF THE SLAVE TRADE

443 that in 1680 the Court of Assistants had to consider methods of encouraging "able and honest men to sue for chief at Cabo Corso".1 There were many reasons for the lack of enthusiasm for the position. It was extremely onerous, and the climate made it dangerous. William Bosman, a chief factor in the Dutch service, ascribed the unhealthiness of the Gold Coast to "a thick, stinking and sulphurous damp or mist", which prevailed in the early morning, and to native habits, among them their "pernicious custom of laying their fish for 5 or 6 days to putrify before they eat it", so that "if this odious mixture of noisome stenches very much affects the state of health, here, it is not to be wondered". He believed that the appalling rate of mortality among Europeans on the coast was also due to bad feeding, excessive drinking and absence of medical assistance, "for we have no help to have recourse to but corrupted Medicines and unskilful Physicians".2

A certain spice of adventure was the chief compensation for the risks of the position, but adventures were not a daily part of the life of the chief agent, and were far from being the lot of those lower in the service. The Company had been founded mainly for the purpose of buying and selling slaves, and the dull routine duties connected with this commerce in Africa were the chief occupation of the Company's servants. By this time the European slave purchases in West Africa were made according to a recognised system. Most of the slaves for export were brought down from the interior to the European trading stations on the coast by native middlemen who kept this part of the business in their own hands. Details in methods of trading varied on different parts of the coast, but both Bosman, who described Gold Coast conditions in the seventeenth century, and Cornelius Hodges, a factor of the Royal African Company, who preceded Mungo Park in exploring the Senegambia interior in 1690,3 agree on this point. The elaborate organisation of the Moorish slave trade in Senegambia is described in detail by Hodges, who noted with interest the length of the Moors' journeys, "above 1100 miles on Camels", and their determination to dispose of their slaves for certain commodities and no other. He also remarked that penetration into the interior in order to get cheap slaves was no real advantage, as what was gained in cost price was lost in tolls to native rulers on the journey. Bosman's description of the Gold Coast mentions the same inland trade, the control by native middlemen, and similar payments of customs to native rulers. When the supply of slaves brought down to the coast was scanty, native traders were occasionally trusted with goods to be sent up country to inland markets. The idea that European traders could carry on the business for over four centuries 1 Minutes, Court of Assist., R. African Co. 29 July 1680 (P.R.O. T. 70/78).

2 Bosman, W., A new and accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, 1705, Letter vini. Stone, T. G., "The Journey of Cornelius Hodges", E.H.R. xxxix, 89. 5 Bosman, Letter XIX.

• Ibid. p. 92.

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