Royal African Company

The Royal African Company was an English chartered trading company established in 1660 as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa and rechartered in 1672 under its better-known name, with James, Duke of York, later King James II, among its governors. Headquartered in London, the company held a royal monopoly on English trade along the West African coast, exporting gold, ivory and enslaved Africans through fortified trading posts including Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, and it is estimated to have transported well over 100,000 enslaved people to the Americas during its most active decades, branding captives with the company's initials. Parliament ended its formal monopoly in 1698, opening the African trade to independent merchants on payment of a duty, and the company survived afterward in a much reduced role focused mainly on its remaining forts and administrative functions rather than direct trading. It ceased operating as a trading concern by the mid-eighteenth century and was formally dissolved in 1821, its remaining assets and forts transferred to the African Company of Merchants and later to the British Crown.