The Elephant and the Castle: Kingship and Coinage in Britain and West Africa, 1663–1726

When the Royal African Company established its West African headquarters in Cape Coast Castle in 1672, it strengthened Crown control over the emerging Atlantic economy and the trading forts on the so-called “Guinea Coast.”  Although much has been written about the social, political and economic impact of the Company’s imposing presence in West Africa, less attention has focused on the cultural connections that formed between crown agents, traders, local leaders and their constituencies.  These connections developed through transactional logics of gift-giving, treaty-making and commercial exchange, generating a rich symbolic economy of royal emblems and icons pervading local social, ritual and political arenas.  Chief among these emblems were the elephant and the castle, featured on the Royal African Company’s coat of arms, imprinted on England’s gold guinea coin, and figuring prominently in the political regalia of Cape Coast’s king and his military asafo companies.  In this essay, I reveal an important link between English monetary policy in the 1690s and Cape Coast political and commercial culture.

            The study addresses the emerging Atlantic relationships between money and political authority during major transitions in the British economy associated with the Bank of England, the Board of Trade and Plantations, and the Royal African Company.  Of central importance is the Great Recoinage of 1696, which attempted to restore England’s national currency by realigning the nominal values of coins with their material worth as gold and silver.  While much has been written on the fiscal side of this misguided monetary policy, I approach it as an epistemological crisis of value, one that fetishized the sovereign symbols of monopolies and markets both at home and abroad.