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The ArchivesInstitutionsThe Company of Merchants Trading to Africa

The Company of Merchants Trading to Africa

The regulated company constituted by the Africa Act of 1750, open to individual British traders for a fee, barred from corporate trading, and governed by nine annually elected representatives of London, Bristol and Liverpool.

From1750ToDate not establishedAlso writtenCompany of Merchants trading to Africa (statutory style); African Committee (its governing committee)

The Act printed in 1750 permitted British subjects to trade between Sally and the Cape of Good Hope, subject to its own restrictions. It constituted traders between Cape Blanco and the Cape of Good Hope as a body corporate under the name "The Company of Merchants trading to Africa", with perpetual succession and a common seal.5,6

An American catalogue later listed a New London reprint among the Acts of the twenty-third year of George II. It gives the title as "An Act for extending and Improving the Trade to Africa, and thus supplying the Plantations and Colonies with Negroes", and describes a folio of twenty-two pages. The scan-backed Act now carries the provisions themselves; the catalogue remains evidence for that colonial reprint.3

A company forbidden to trade

This was a regulated company rather than a joint-stock trading corporation. Section IV forbade it to trade to or from Africa in a corporate or joint capacity, to hold joint or transferable stock, or to borrow on its common seal. Individual members could trade; the corporate body maintained the common establishment.8

Admission cost forty shillings. London, Bristol and Liverpool each elected three members of the first committee, and the same three-city division governed later annual elections. The nine met in London. No person could serve on the committee for more than three successive years, and trading partners could not sit together.10,11,12,16,17

The forts and their officers

The Act did not itself complete the transfer from the Royal African Company. Section III provided that the old Company's forts, settlements, factories and associated property would vest in the new body after a further Act divested the old Company. The new Company was to employ them only for the protection, encouragement and defence of trade.7

Management lay in the committee of nine, with five sufficient to act. It could make orders for the forts and factories, appoint and remove governors and other civil and military officers, demand security for good behaviour and regulate servants abroad. Its orders could not restrain individual traders contrary to the Act's open-trade purpose.9,15

Fifteen years before the Act, John Atkins had printed the argument made by supporters of an exclusive company. They said that a rich and powerful body needed special powers to sustain forts and garrisons and to keep the trade from the Dutch. The 1750 settlement kept the shared forts, but rejected the corporate monopoly that argument defended.4

Money, trade and oversight

The committee could buy and insure goods and stores for Africa, sell them there and apply the proceeds solely to the forts and the wages of their officers. It could not return enslaved people or other goods from Africa or otherwise conduct the trade itself. The distinction did not remove the Company from the slave trade: the forts supported and protected the individual merchants who carried it on.13,18

The Act required annual accounts to the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, covering money, orders, instructions and other transactions. It also prescribed how the committee was chosen and supervised. These provisions made the Company an administrator of infrastructure and officers for an open body of traders, answerable through public offices rather than through holders of transferable stock.14

What the evidence does not settle

The founding Act now settles the corporate name, admission fee, committee structure, tenure limit, trading prohibition and system of accounts. It also corrects one loose formulation in the old record: the forts were to pass only after a further divesting Act, not simply on the founding Act's passage. That later enactment and the African Companies papers in T 70 are needed for the transfer date and inventory. The committee's minutes and audited accounts would show how its legal design worked and how Parliament financed the forts. The Company began after the piracy period covered by most of this Archive; events before 1750 belong to the Royal African Company.

What the evidence does not settle

Transfer of Royal African Company forts

  • Date and mechanism of the 1752 fort transfer not established

Roster of inherited forts

  • The complete names of the inherited forts

The 1821 dissolution

  • Persistence of slavery within the company's territory unresolved

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The Company of Merchants Trading to Africa was created by an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain of 1750, "An act for extending and improving the trade to Africa," whose preamble recites that "the trade to and from Africa is very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for the supplying the plantations," and the new company took over the West African forts and factories of the Royal African Company. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Statute in transcription: An act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (African Company Act 1750), The Statutes Project transcription; the same Act transcribed on Wikisource
  2. The company was a regulated and not a joint-stock body: any British merchant trading to Africa could be admitted on payment of forty shillings, there was no transferable stock, and government was vested in a body of nine, the African Committee, elected annually by the freemen and sitting in London, three returned from each of the three principal African-trading ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool, with tenure reported as limited to three consecutive years; the Act made it unlawful for the company to trade to or from Africa in its corporate or joint capacity. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Founding statute and secondary scholarship: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa, 23 Geo. II c.31
  3. Isaiah Thomas's catalogue of American imprints places the Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa among the Acts of the twenty-third year of George II, gives its title as An Act for extending and Improving the Trade to Africa, and thus supplying the Plantations and Colonies with Negroes, and records it reprinted at New London as a folio of twenty-two pages. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed catalogue of imprints: Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, with a Biography of Printers, vol. 2, the catalogue of Ante-Revolutionary Publications, the list for the year 1751.
  4. John Atkins, writing in 1735, reports the argument of the favourers of companies in the Africa trade: that if the trade must be allowed at all it was better for the public that some rich and powerful set of men should have exclusive powers, to encourage and enable the subsisting of forts and garrisons, to awe the natives, and to keep the trade from being engrossed by the Dutch, to whom whatever the English relinquished fell as an acquisition. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period printed description: John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies, in His Majesty's Ships the Swallow and Weymouth (London, 1735), the account of the African Company and the trade to it.
  5. Section I permits British subjects to trade without restraint between Sally in South Barbary and the Cape of Good Hope, except as the Act itself provides. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), preamble and section I, library lines 10-12
  6. Section II makes British subjects trading between Cape Blanco and the Cape of Good Hope a corporate body named the Company of Merchants trading to Africa, with perpetual succession and a common seal. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section II, library lines 14-16
  7. Section III provides that the Royal African Company's forts, settlements and factories would vest in the new Company after a further Act divested the old company, and were to serve the protection and defence of trade. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section III, library line 17
  8. Section IV forbids the Company to trade to or from Africa in a corporate or joint capacity, to hold joint or transferable stock, or to borrow on its common seal. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section IV, library line 18
  9. Section V places management in an annually chosen committee of nine meeting in London, with five members sufficient to act. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section V, library line 20
  10. Section VI admits the first freemen on payment of forty shillings and provides for the London members to choose three people for the first committee. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section VI, library line 21
  11. Section VII provides for annual election of a nine-person committee and assigns three of its places to the Company's freemen admitted in London. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section VII, library line 22
  12. Section XIX bars a person from serving as a committee member for more than three successive years and prevents trading partners from serving together. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section XIX, library line 35
  13. Section XX allows the committee to buy and insure goods and stores, send them to Africa, and apply them solely to the forts and their staff. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section XX, library line 36
  14. Section XXIII requires the committee to give the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations at least annual accounts of money, orders, instructions and other transactions. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source or printed calendar: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section XXIII, library line 39
  15. Section V empowers the committee to govern, preserve and improve the forts and factories and to appoint and remove their civil and military officers. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section V, library line 20
  16. Section VII assigns three annual committee places to freemen admitted at Bristol. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section VII, library line 22
  17. Section VII assigns three annual committee places to freemen admitted at Liverpool. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section VII, library line 22
  18. Section XX forbids the committee to carry enslaved people or other goods from Africa or otherwise conduct trade to or from Africa. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period primary source: An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa (1750), section XX, library line 36