France joined in the traffic in 1624, and then Holland and Denmark, and the rivalry soon became intense.  England, with her usual aggressiveness, assumed a commanding position, and, much more than has commonly been supposed, the Navigation Ordinance of 1651 and the two wars with the Dutch in the seventeenth century had as their basis the struggle for supremacy in the slave-trade.  The English trade proper began with the granting of rights to special companies, to one in 1618, to another in 1631, and in 1662 to the “Company of Royal Adventurers,” rechartered in 1672 as the “Royal African Company,” to which in 1687 was given the exclusive right to trade between the Gold Coast and the British colonies in America.  James, Duke of York, was interested in this last company, and it agreed to supply the West Indies with three thousand slaves annually.  In 1698, on account of the incessant clamor of English merchants, the trade was opened generally, and any vessel carrying the British flag was by act of Parliament permitted to engage in it on payment of a duty of 10 per cent on English goods exported to Africa.  New England immediately engaged in the traffic, and vessels from Boston and Newport went forth to the Gold Coast laden with hogsheads of rum.  In course of time there developed a three-cornered trade by which molasses was brought from the West Indies to New England, made into rum to be taken to Africa and exchanged for slaves, the slaves in turn being brought to the West Indies or the Southern colonies.[1] A slave purchased for one hundred gallons of rum worth L10 brought from L20 to L50 when offered for sale in America.[2] Newport soon had twenty-two still houses, and even these could not satisfy the demand.  England regarded the slave-trade as of such importance that when in 1713 she accepted the Peace of Utrecht she insisted on having awarded to her for thirty years the exclusive right to transport slaves to the Spanish colonies in America.  When in the course of the eighteenth century the trade became fully developed, scores of vessels went forth each year to engage in it; but just how many slaves were brought to the present United States and how many were taken to the West Indies or South America, it is impossible to say.  In 1726 the three cities of London, Bristol, and Liverpool alone had 171 ships engaged in the traffic, and the profits were said to warrant a thousand more, though such a number was probably never reached so far as England alone was concerned.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Bogart:  Economic History, 72.]

[Footnote 2:  Coman:  Industrial History, 78.]

[Footnote 3:  Ballagh:  Slavery in Virginia, 12.]

4. Planting of Slavery in the Colonies