Description
Book SynopsisThis book investigates the Guinea Company and its members, aiming to understand the genealogy of several major changes taking place in the English Atlantic and in the Anglo-Africa trade in the seventeenth century and beyond. Little attention has been paid to the companies that preceded the Royal African Company, launched in 1672, and by presenting the Guinea Company – the earliest of England’s chartered Africa companies – and its relationship with the influential men who became its members, this book questions the inevitability of the Atlantic reality of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through its members, the Guinea Company emerged as a purpose-built structure with the ability to weather a volatile trade undergoing fundamental change.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations and Tables Abbreviations Introduction Foundations 1 Launching the Guinea Company, 1618–1630 1 Introduction 2 Members of the Early Guinea Company 2.1 Discoverers and Naval Men 2.2 Court Connections and Financial Trouble 3 The Two Merchants 3.1 John Davies 3.2 Humphrey Slaney 4 The Company in Court 5 Internal Strife 6 The End of the First Patent 7 Conclusion 2 Fit for Purpose: the Guinea Company in the 1630s and 1640s 1 Introduction 2 Format of Trade 3 John Wood and the Guinea Company of the 1640s 4 A 1640s Snapshot 5 Early English Slave Trade – Formal and Informal 6 Conclusion 3 The Honourable Guinea and East India Company, 1640–1663 1 Introduction 2 Why the Coast of Guinea? 3 Potential for Connection 4 Renegotiating the Patent 4.1 Samuel Vassal’s Suggestions and Changes in to the Patent 4.2 An Unfortunate Gambian Adventure 4.3 Gold Mining 5 1657 to 1664: the United East India and Guinea Company on the Coast of Africa 6 The Loss of the Trade 7 Conclusion 4 The Official Push to the West: How to Control the Atlantic? 1 Introduction 2 Practices of the Past, the Case of Virginia 3 The English Civil War 4 A New approach to Colonial Management 5 The Restoration 6 Conclusion 5 Royal Adventurers and the Spanish Asiento 1 Introduction 2 The Company of Royal Adventures Trading into Africa 3 Securing the Asiento 4 Servicing the Asiento 5 English Slave Trading under the Asiento 6 Winding up the company 7 Conclusion Conclusion Appendix 1 Africa Company Members Appendix 2 Debtors to the Guinea Company from June 1643 to June 1644 Primary Archival Material Bibliography Index
