Royal African Company

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The Royal African Company (RAC) (English for Royal African Society ) was in 1671 as a trading company for British trade in West Africa and the West Indies established and equipped with an appropriate royal monopoly patent, which carries under the Great Seal of England, the date September 27, 1672. The Royal African Company existed until April 10, 1752.

history

The Royal African Company was the successor company of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading to Africa , which had declared bankruptcy in 1668 and returned the license to trade in West Africa to the Crown. In order not to endanger the British presence in West Africa, the West African trade had been leased to the Gambia Adventurers in the transition period until a new society was formed .

The founding members of the Royal African Company included numerous family members of the Crispe family, such as John and Thomas Crispe, Edward Crispe, and Nicholas Crispe the Younger. The new patent holders made it their mission to further expand the English establishments on the Gold Coast and, above all, to rebuild them in those places from where the Dutch West India Company could better resist, since at that time there was a state of war in Europe . But even after the fighting in Europe ceased, the Dutch and British representatives on the Guinea coast continued to be filled with deep distrust of one another.

English (British) establishments in West Africa existed in the Gambia , Sierra Leone , on the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast at that time . At that time, the main focus of trading activities in West Africa was the slave trade and exports of redwood (Sierra Leone), gold , ivory and spices . Especially after the Asiento de negros was transferred from France to Great Britain in the Peace of Utrecht (April 11, 1714) as war compensation , the slave trade was in the foreground. With the Asiento, His British Majesty undertook to deliver 144,000 pièces d'Inde of both sexes to the Spanish colonies in America over a period of 30 years . However, the Asiento de negros was massively abused by Great Britain by tolerating and promoting surreptitious trade . This bypassed the tax to be paid to the Spanish king for slaves delivered. This was also one of the reasons for the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1739, which ultimately ushered in the ruin of the Royal African Company .

The first years of the 1680s were particularly profitable years for the RAC in terms of the slave trade. During these years, the general drought in the Sahara and the western savanna regions , which had persisted since 1630, reached a new high point, which was linked to a very serious supply crisis. The resulting general famine , which struck the entire West African area south of the Sahara from the Senegal estuary over the Niger down to the gold and slave coast, led, among other things, to the phenomenon that numerous Africans voluntarily entered into slavery, only to get something to eat and thereby survive.

This is also made clear by the following figures: If in the period from 1651 to 1675 a total of 371,200 slaves were officially exported from West Africa north of Angola by Portuguese, English, Dutch and French together (in the arithmetic mean 14,848 people per year), it was in the period from 1676 to 1700: 618,900 (24,756 per year) and in the period from 1701 to 1710: 312,200 slaves (31,220 per year).

However, English trade in West Africa was largely paralyzed by the Anglo-Dutch War in Europe in the 1680s, and by the beginning of the 1690s on the Guinea coast was completely ruined. The English factor in Whydah , Petley Weyborne , was even forced to employ one of the otherwise bitterly fought lord bearers as his agent on Whydah, since other people were no longer available. He had at least sufficient knowledge of the coast and the markets east of Cape Coast and Accra . Although officially employed as an agent, he showed only a very unsatisfactory level of commitment in his new position. This led to the fact that the captains of the few English company ships that anchored off Whydah during this time were increasingly negotiating directly with the local slave traders themselves, although a commission of four per hundred slaves in favor of the captain and to the detriment of the company usual measure for this was.

In 1697 the English Parliament was concerned with trade in Africa and considered it appropriate, as a means of further enlarging and improving it, to open trade to all His Majesty's subjects. This should be done for a period of 13 years from the end of the next parliamentary session. At the same time, however, Parliament considered it necessary that the numerous forts maintained by the Royal African Company on the West African coast should also be preserved in the future to secure and better manage said trade. It was therefore considered appropriate to levy a duty on all goods exported to Africa in the amount of ten percent of the value of the goods "ad valorem" for the period mentioned - insured and paid to the RAC to maintain their forts. June 1698 to June 24, 1712 in force. Captains and traders who took part in the West African trade on this basis were therefore also called "ten percent men" or "ten percent traders".

It was not a success, to which the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe is likely to have made a significant contribution, but at least the cent percent levy at the RAC replaced part of the expenses. The cost of maintaining the forts averaged £ 20,000 / year at the time, which theoretically results in maintenance costs of £ 280,000 over 14 years. The duty paid by the "ten percent merchants" over the same period yielded a revenue of £ 73,585 + 10s. + 6½ d. The ten percent tax on company exports yielded £ 36,387 + 13s over the same period. + 1½ d. The period of validity of this regulation was not extended when it expired. Trade remained open after 1712, as it had been under the authority of the 10% Law, and all subjects of His British Majesty have since then been able to trade freely and openly in all parts of Africa if they so wished.

In 1730 the society sent a petition to Parliament, in which they stated that they would need more income to maintain the forts and secure trade than they could generate in their current state. Parliament then approved an annual payment of £ 10,000 from the state budget to maintain the forts and other settlements. This sum was also paid annually with the exception of a two to three year break.

The Royal African Company existed until April 10, 1752, after it was revoked in 1751 by a law of the English Parliament the license for the royal trade monopoly. Property and rights of the RAC were transferred in 1751 to the Company of Merchants trading to Africa , which had been newly founded the year before .

RAC factories

James Island ( Fort James ) (1664–1702, from 1721)
in the Sherbro area ( here English presence already before 1618 , from 1682 on York Island )
on Bunce Island (from 1672)
on the island of Tasso (from 1680)
Cape Coast Castle (from 1664), Dixcove (from 1684, again from 1691), Sekondi (from 1680), Kommendah (1663–1682, from 1695), Anomabu (Annamaboe) (from 1679), Adja (Adra) (from 1674 ), Kormantin ( Saltpond ) (again 1782–1785), Tantamkweri (from 1725), Winneba (until 1812), Shido (from 1690), (Klein-) Accra (from 1672), Pram-Pram (from 1740)
Offra / Jakin (from 1678, moved to Whydah in 1682), Whydah (from 1682, Fort Williams from 1702), Badagri (until 1784), Abeokuta (?), Lagos (?)

Others

Royal African Company logo (1705)

The RAC logo was represented by an elephant and a castle .

The gold of the gold coins minted by the Royal Mint (Royal English Mint) came for the most part from the West African Guinean coast and here mainly from the Gold Coast, but a small part was also obtained at the mouth of the Gambia. One of the gold coins minted in England was therefore also called a guinee and showed elephants under the bust of the king or queen.

other well-known partners and ten percent traders:

See also

literature

  • John Iliffe : History of Africa. 2nd Edition. Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46309-6 .
  • Robin Law, The Common People Were Divided: Monarchy, Aristocracy and Political Factionalism in the Kingdom of Whydah, 1671-1727. In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies. Vol. 23, No. 2, 1990, 201-229, doi : 10.2307 / 219335 .
  • Paul E. Lovejoy: The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis. In: Journal of African History. Vol. 23, No. 4, 1982, pp. 473-501, doi : 10.1017 / S0021853700021319 .
  • Robert Porter: The Crispe Family and the African Trade in the Seventeenth Century. In: Journal of African History. Vol. 9, No. 1, 1968, pp. 57-77, doi : 10.1017 / S0021853700008355 .
  • Colin W. Newbury: The Western Slave Coast and its Rulers. European Trade and Administration among the Yoruba and Adja-speaking Peoples of south-western Nigeria, southern Dahomey and Togo. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961.
  • Henry Meredith: An Account of the Gold Coast of Africa. With a brief history of the African Company. Longman, London 1812, ( digitized version ).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The dates before 1752 correspond to the English calendar system of that time, i.e. H. the Julian calendar with the beginning of the year on March 25th, which was in use in England and Ireland (not in Scotland) until 1752.
  2. ↑ Both are brothers of Sir Nicholas Crispe, who died in 1666 . The enduring British presence on the Gold Coast is largely thanks to Nicholas Crispe.
  3. ↑ Ship's captain and son of Tobias Crispe, a brother of Sir Nicholas
  4. ↑ a grandson of Sir Nicholas
  5. ↑ In the so-called Third Anglo-Dutch Sea War, England, France and Sweden face each other on the one hand and the Netherlands, Spain and Brandenburg on the other as opponents of the war. In 1673 the Emperor and Duke of Lorraine also entered the war on the side of the anti-Anglo-French alliance. The war began on April 6, 1672 with the declaration of war by France and England on the Netherlands and ended on February 14, 1674 with the peace at Westminster. However, France had continued the war on its own account. (Franco-Dutch-Spanish naval war 1674–1678)
  6. ↑ means slaves
  7. ↑ The numbers are taken from Lovejoy's paper below.
  8. ↑ Lord carrier is the old German term for surreptitious traders, d. H. a ship's captain who, bypassing the state monopoly, traded in his own name and for his own account. Dutch: Lorrendreyer , English: interlooper , French: entreloope
  9. ↑ The Sterling in the former England was a fictional calculation coin (Banco coin) with a value of 1 lb = 16 ounces sterling silver (= 22-carat silver = 22 parts of silver + 2 parts of copper) with the partition: 1 pound ( £) = 20 shillings (s.), Each of 12 denari (d.) (Penny), d. H. The value of 240 denari corresponded exactly to the value represented by 22/24 pounds of fine silver. This definition existed since 1489. It was not until the 19th century that paper bills with pounds sterling appeared as a currency in circulation. Zedlers Universal Lexikon (1735) mentions the conversion of gold to silver money in England: 1 ounce of gold = £ 3 + 14 s. + 2 d.