English Traders on the Guinea Coast, 1657–1668
An Analysis of the East India Company Archive
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9314960 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Margaret Makepeace (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Pages | 237-284 |
| Publication date | 1989-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History in Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3171787 |
| OpenAlex | W2084884985 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 4 |
English trade with Guinea in west Africa was regulated during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by royal letters patent. In 1631 Charles I issued a patent which entitled the Guinea Company, headed by Sir Nicholas Crispe, to the monopoly of trade from Cape Blanco to the Cape of Good Hope for a period of thirty-one years. The Guinea Company continued to operate during the Interregnum in spite of increased competition both from freelance merchants, known as interlopers, and from rival European powers. The Council of State in 1651 decided to allow the monopoly to run for a further fourteen years, but restricted the Company to an area lying between two points set twenty leagues to the north of Cormantine, its headquarters in Guinea, and twenty leagues south of the fort at Sierra Leone, leaving the remainder of the coast open to all English traders. The East India Company was eager to gain a part in the Guinea trade because ships calling there on the way to India could exchange a cargo of European manufactured goods for a consignment of gold and ivory which was used to sustain operations at the factories in India. In this way the Company had less need to export large quantities of bullion from England to India, a practice which was both heavily criticized and formally restricted before 1660. In 1649 the East India Company reached an agreement with the Assada adventurers that the Guinea and East India trades should be united, but decided that this scheme could not be effected immediately
Adventure · Ancient history · Archaeology · Bullion · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · League · Monopoly · Sierra leone · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History
Materializing the Middle Passage
Transportation and Transplantation
Port labour, global commodities, and material skill development
Linen, Silver, Slaves, and Coffee
Caribbean plantation economies as colonial models
West Africa in the British Atlantic
The Relative Importance of Slaves and Commodities in the Atlantic Trade of Seventeenth-Century Africa
Constructing new pronominal systems from the Atlantic to the Pacific
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 1994 - 2025 (32) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |