Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Royal African Company: Monopoly and Atrocity
Transcript
- Lucas: So far in this series, we've talked about the slave trade as a massive, sprawling system — voyages from Liverpool, plantations in Barbados, the Middle Passage. But today, I want to zoom in on one institution that, for a time, controlled almost all of England's slave trafficking: the Royal African Company. Luna: The Royal African Company — I've heard the name, but I don't really know what it did. Lucas: It was a monopoly chartered by King Charles II in 1660, originally called the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa. The idea was simple: the English crown wanted a piece of the slave trade that the Portuguese and Dutch had been dominating, so they gave a group of investors — including the king's brother James, Duke of York — exclusive rights to trade along the west coast of Africa. Luna: So it was like a government-sponsored corporation, but for human trafficking. Lucas: Exactly. And it was wildly profitable — at least for the shareholders. The company built a string of forts along what is now Ghana, the Gold Coast. Places like Cape Coast Castle, which still stands today as a grim monument. Anomabu, James Fort, and others. These weren't just trading posts; they were prisons. Enslaved Africans were held in underground dungeons — sometimes for months — before being loaded onto ships. Lucas: The company had a monopoly, but it was constantly under threat from what were called 'interlopers' — private traders who smuggled slaves outside the company's charter. By the 1690s, the monopoly was crumbling, but the RAC was still the single largest transporter of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. Luna: How many people did they transport? Lucas: Historians estimate that between 1660 and its dissolution in 1752, the Royal African Company shipped around 150,000 enslaved Africans. That's a staggering number, but it's a fraction of the total trade. What makes the RAC so important is that it set the template — the infrastructure, the financing, the legal framework — for the entire British slave economy. Lucas: And there's a specific story I want to tell you from 1694. It's about a slave ship called the 'Hannibal' — not the Carthaginian general, but a 450-ton vessel owned by the company. The 'Hannibal' set sail from Cape Coast Castle in July 1694, captained by a man named Thomas Phillips. He left a detailed journal of the voyage. Luna: Wait — we have an actual captain's log from a slave ship? Lucas: We do. Phillips kept a meticulous record, and it's one of the most horrifying documents we have from the period. On the third day out, the enslaved Africans — about 700 of them packed into the hold — staged a rebellion. They managed to break through the gratings and rushed the crew. Phillips and his men fired into the crowd, killing about a hundred. The survivors were whipped and chained even more tightly. Luna: That's… I mean, we've talked about resistance before, but reading it in the captain's own words must be chilling. Lucas: It is. Phillips wrote that the Africans were 'resolute' and that they 'preferred death to slavery.' But the rebellion failed. And then, after the uprising, the ship continued its journey. Disease broke out — dysentery, smallpox — and by the time they reached Barbados, only 372 of the original 700 were still alive. That's a mortality rate of nearly 50 percent. Lucas: Phillips filed a claim with the company's insurers, arguing that the loss of life was due to 'insurrection and distemper' — which allowed the company to collect insurance on the dead. The 'Hannibal' case became a precedent for how slave ship insurance worked. The enslaved were treated as cargo, and their deaths were just a business expense. Luna: So the Royal African Company was literally insuring human cargo. Who were the investors? Lucas: This is where it gets very close to the top of English society. The initial investors included King Charles II himself, his brother James, and dozens of aristocrats, members of Parliament, and wealthy merchants. The company was also deeply tied to the Bank of England, which was founded in 1694 — the same year as the 'Hannibal' voyage. Many of the same people sat on the boards of both institutions. Lucas: In fact, the Bank of England's first governor, Sir John Houblon, was a major investor in the Royal African Company. The city of London's financial district built its early wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans. And that legacy is still visible today — there are buildings, statues, and institutions that can trace their origins directly to the slave trade. Luna: I remember you mentioning in an earlier episode that British ports like Liverpool and Bristol grew rich on slavery. So the RAC was the engine behind that? Lucas: It was the first engine. The RAC's monopoly created a template for financing and organization that later private traders expanded. By the time the company lost its monopoly in 1698, the infrastructure was already in place. After that, independent traders — the 'interlopers' — flooded the market, and the volume of slaves shipped from Africa skyrocketed. Lucas: But I don't want to paint the RAC as just a European story. The company couldn't have operated without African partners. On the Gold Coast, the Fante people were key middlemen. They controlled the trade routes from the interior and sold captives to the Europeans at the coastal forts. The Asante Empire, further inland, also traded prisoners of war to the coast in exchange for guns and textiles. Luna: That's a delicate point — African kingdoms participating in the trade. But it's important to understand, I think. Lucas: Absolutely. The Asante, for example, were not passive victims. They were a powerful state that expanded through conquest, and they traded their captives to Europeans for firearms, which allowed them to conquer even more territory. It's a tragic cycle. But we have to be careful not to blame the victims. The demand came from Europe, and the Europeans had the military and economic power to dictate terms. Lucas: The Royal African Company itself never really recovered from the loss of its monopoly. By the 1730s, it was struggling financially. It had spent huge sums maintaining the forts, and private traders were undercutting its prices. In 1752, the company was dissolved and its assets — including the forts — were transferred to a new entity called the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa. Luna: So the forts just changed hands and kept operating. The trade didn't stop. Lucas: No, it didn't. Cape Coast Castle continued to hold enslaved Africans for another fifty years, until Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. The Royal African Company as a legal entity might have ended, but its legacy — the infrastructure, the financial networks, the normalization of treating human beings as cargo — persisted long after. Lucas: I think what strikes me most about the RAC is how ordinary it all seemed to the people involved. The king, the duke, the bankers, the ship captains — they were all just doing business. There's a letter from a company official in the 1680s that casually mentions 'the usual number of Negroes' expected on the next ship. That dehumanization, that acceptance, is what made the Atlantic slave trade possible for centuries. Luna: And the 'Hannibal' log — that's a direct window into that mindset. It's haunting that we have such a clear record of the brutality. Lucas: It is. But it also gives us a clear record of resistance. Those 100 people who died in the rebellion weren't anonymous statistics; they were people who chose to fight. And even though they lost, their act of defiance is preserved in the very document that was meant to justify their deaths as a business loss. Luna: That's a powerful way to end. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thank you, Luna. And to our listeners, if you want to learn more about the Royal African Company, we'll have links and sources in the show notes. Next time, we'll look at the abolition movement and the people who finally brought the British slave trade to an end.