In West Africa, where the tapestry of history was profoundly woven with Europe’s commercial ambitions, a vibrant gold trade flourished long before the Age of Sail. For millennia, agricultural communities along the Sahara’s southern edge enriched themselves by mining a mineral coveted by Berber and Arab merchants who traversed the desert: gold. Tales of opulent African rulers, adorned in gold-laden finery and seated in domed pavilions with gold-draped horses, captivated European imaginations, evoking visions of mythical wealth akin to El Dorado.
By the late 15th century, the allure of gold drew Portuguese navigators to forge direct maritime links with the peoples of the aptly named Gold Coast. Trading posts, such as El Mina and Cape Coast Castle, sprouted along the shore, fostering commerce in gold, ivory, dyewoods, hides, and pepper. Yet, this burgeoning trade reshaped the region’s chiefdoms in complex ways, intensifying rivalries, spurring warfare, and escalating slave raiding. While West African societies had long incorporated slavery, their captives traditionally enjoyed greater rights than those destined for Muslim or Christian markets. Now, prisoners of war became prized commodities, traded for European firearms that amplified chiefly power and fueled further conflicts. Selling captives also offered rulers a means to dispose of criminals and rivals, enriching their coffers.
Until centuries later, imperial conquest did not follow trade. Local rulers retained dominion over commerce, confining European influence to coastal enclaves. The region’s diseases, deadly to outsiders, earned it the grim moniker “white man’s graveyard,” deterring deeper incursion.
English interest in West Africa remained tepid until the 17th century. John Hawkins’s slaving voyages in the 1560s were a fleeting venture, and only after 1640 did the Guinea Company pursue slaving to supply Barbados’s sugar plantations. Hampered by piracy, Dutch competition, and its frailties, the company faltered, its assets absorbed by the East India Company in 1657. The Atlantic, meanwhile, teemed with private traders—unscrupulous shipmasters who flouted maritime norms, attacking depots, seizing cargoes, and burning vessels in pursuit of profit.
By 1650, the Dutch, with their formidable mercantile fleet and West India Company outposts on the Gold and Slave Coasts, dominated Atlantic trade. Their ascendancy sparked the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54), a costly naval conflict that resolved little. In 1660, with the restoration of Charles II, England sought to secure its West African trade through a new chartered company, spurred by two dashing royalists: Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Sir Robert Holmes. Rupert, enthralled by tales of gold-rich kings during a Gambian voyage, leveraged his influence with James, Duke of York, to challenge Dutch dominance. Holmes, a bold naval commander, audaciously claimed the coast from Gorée to the Cape of Good Hope for England, establishing posts in the Gambia and forging trade ties.
Thus, in 1660, the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa was born, with Rupert and James as its patrons. Rechartered in 1663 as the Royal African Company (RAC), this joint-stock venture—backed by Charles II and protected by the royal navy—promised investors dazzling returns from Guinea’s gold. In 1665, gold generated £200,000 of the RAC’s revenue, dwarfing the £100,000 from ivory, hides, dyewoods, and pepper. Yet, the 1663 charter expanded the company’s scope to include slaves, driven by African rulers’ supply of war captives and the insatiable labor demands of West Indian plantations. By 1690, the RAC was the primary slave supplier to the New World, though the Dutch retained the lion’s share of the gold trade.
Trade rivalry ignited the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–67), with Holmes’s aggressive coastal raids—sinking ships and seizing posts—fanning the flames. England’s fortunes crumbled amid domestic crises, including the 1665 plague and the Great Fire of London. Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter reclaimed nearly all captured posts, leaving only Cape Coast Castle as the RAC’s stronghold. Crippled by losses, the company ceased trading by 1665, licensing private traders to operate under its rights. In 1669, it ceded Gambian interests to the Company of Gambia Adventurers. By then, the slave trade, fueled by West Indian plantation growth, had eclipsed other commerce, attracting ships from England, Holland, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Brandenburg.
Revived by 1672 with fresh capital and merchant investors, the RAC contracted to supply 5,600 slaves annually to the Americas. Yet, challenges persisted: high slave mortality during brutal transatlantic voyages, haggling plantation owners, and rampant competition from private traders disrupted markets. Foreign privateers and violent coastal rivalries further strained operations. Political upheaval compounded these woes. James II’s ascension in 1685 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, which crowned William and Mary, undermined the RAC’s royal charter. England’s war with France (1689–97) saw a quarter of the company’s ships captured, while Dutch allies continued to encroach.
By 1698, the RAC’s monopoly collapsed, and free trade opened West Africa to all English merchants. Private traders soon outpaced the company, shipping four times as many slaves by 1708. By 1730, the RAC had ceased trading, reduced to maintaining coastal depots for others. The slave trade, however, endured, outliving the company by 77 years, a somber testament to the era’s moral and human toll.