The Royal African Company’s Competitors in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, 1672–1732

From its establishment in 1672 the Royal African Company (RAC) enjoyed a monopoly over English trade with Africa, including the trade in enslaved human beings, but “interlopers” constantly challenged this exclusive privilege by trading in Africa anyway.  Through political pressure these separate traders succeeded in securing Parliamentary legislation opening the African trade to all British subjects with some restrictions from 1697 and with no restrictions from 1712.  This created an opportunity for the separate traders to wrest the slave trade away from their joint-stock competitor, the RAC.  Collectively speaking, they entirely succeeded in doing so, driving the RAC out of the slave trade entirely by 1732. 

Yet the triumph of the independent slave traders over the RAC was by no means a foregone conclusion, as revealed by the quantitative data painstakingly compiled by the editors of the online Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.  These data indicate a wide range of success and failure among the separate traders.  A handful of individuals proved to be prolific investors in the slave trade, such as Humphry Morice of London who organized 78 voyages or Isaac Hobhouse of Bristol who invested in 68 voyages.  By contrast, the vast majority of British individuals investing in slave trading voyages during this period did so only once, indicating unsatisfactory profits from their foray into this risky trade.  The existence of these and other patterns among investors named in the Database reveals that “the separate traders” cannot be said collectively to have benefited from the political transition from joint-stock monopoly control to open competition within the British transatlantic slave trade.  High capital needs, the importance of experience and contacts on the African coast, and the sheer mortality of slave cargoes acted as effective barriers to entry for most would-be slave traders.