In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed but that of might.  Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guinea trade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for without the resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, and without the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold.  The first English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade to gold and other produce.  Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambia was offered some slaves by a native trader.  “I made answer,” Jobson relates, “we were a people who did not deal in any such commodities; neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes; at which he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandize they carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestly desired them.  We answered, they were another kind of people, different from us; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would return again."[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by another in 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilege was granted for a time to the East India Company.

[Footnote 3:  Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade (London 1623,), pp. 29, 87, quoted in James Bandinel, Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa (London, 1842), p. 43.]

Under Charles II activities were resumed vigorously by a company chartered in 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that its capital of L122,000 vanished.  In a drastic reorganization its affairs were taken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in 1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopoly rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash dividends on its L100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300 per cent.  But now came reverses through European war and through the competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea.  Now came also a clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by would-be free traders.  After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697 restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent, on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on certain minor exports carried thence.

[Footnote 4:  The financial career of the company is described by W.R.  Scott, “The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of England till 1720,” in the American Historical Review, VIII. 241-259.]