96 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementthan before; it continued to lose money and went bankrupt
in 1750. In 1750, the British Parliament dissolved the Com-
pany and its ports and facilities were donated to the mer-
chants trading to Africa. Th e American Colonies by this
time were heading toward the American Revolution. Th ere
were confl icting interests pushing for the abolishment of
slave traffi cking, but the British were more involved than
ever overall with slave trading. In retrospect, the Royal Af-
rican Company brought about increased regulation of the
trade, but by doing so, it also brought about a tremendous
increase in the number of Africans that were sold into
slavery.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; Cape Coast Castle; Factor;
Gold Coast; Sierra LeoneSteven NapierBibliography
Davies, Kenneth Gordon. Th e Royal African Company. New York:
Atheneum, 1970.
Klein, Herbert S. Th e Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999.
Law, Robin. Th e English in West Africa, 1691 – 1699. Th e Local
Correspondence of the Royal African Company of England,
1681–1699, pt. 3. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press for
Th e British Academy, 2006.
Th omas, Hugh. Th e Slave Trade: Th e Story of the Atlantic Slave
Trade, 1 440– 1 870. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Walvin, James. Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery. Washing-
ton, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1994.Sahel
“Sahel,” an Arabic word for seashore, is used to describe a
belt of land that expands from the west coast to the east
coast across the continent of Africa. Th is land belt is di-
rectly below the desert region and directly above the forest
region. Specifi cally, the Sahel is the area where the Sahara
desert meets the grasslands and the savannah regions of
Africa. Th is area is known as the “coastline” of the Sahara
desert. Th e east and west borders of this region are the At-
lantic Ocean to the west and the Red Sea to the east. Th e
modern-day countries that this land belt extends through
are Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger,
Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan. It is to be noted that although
the belt may extend through these countries, the entire
countries do no lie within the belt, only a portion. Th e areaa tremendous eff ect upon Britain’s economy. Once the trad-
ing began in large numbers aft er 1660, both Bristol and
Liverpool fl ourished and increased dramatically in popu-
lation and in economic activity. Th roughout its existence,
although based in London, the ships of the Royal African
Company sailed primarily out of the harbors of Bristol and
Liverpool. Th roughout the 17th and 18th centuries, around
one-and-a-half million Africans were captured and trans-
ported to the colonies by the British. Th e Royal African
Company was responsible for half that number. It is the
Royal African Company who most historians and scholars
attribute with transforming the colonies from a system of
indentured servitude to a system of racial slavery.
Historians are able to discover much about the slave
trade through records that were maintained by the Royal
African Company. Its records contain detailed listings of
trade and commerce of everything from humans to sugar.
Th e fi rearm industry in Britain was primarily maintained
through the slave trade. An average of 150,000 fi rearms
were exchanged annually by the Royal African Company
for humans. By 1712, though, the debts of the Royal Af-
rican Company led it to lobby the British Parliament for
additional funding or for debt relief. Th e British govern-
ment did pass legislation that allowed for the Company to
secure payment on some outstanding balances and to gain
additional time to pay off some of its debts. By 1713, Britain
had gained the exclusive privilege of transporting slaves to
the Spanish Americas under the conditions of the Treaty
of Utrecht. Th e treaty ended the fi ghting between Spain
and the other countries of Europe aft er the death of the last
Spanish Habsburg.
By 1730, the Royal African Company was suff ering
from so many fi nancial diffi culties that it had insuffi cient
funds to keep up the maintenance on the ports and facili-
ties needed to continue the trade. As a result, the British
government allocated 10,000 pounds annually from that
point on as upkeep on those constructions. Th e Royal Af-
rican Company, aft er losing money for decades in the slave
trade, fi nally discontinued slave traffi cking in 1732. Th e
Company sold the Africans it held in its facilities waiting to
be shipped on the African coast to other companies. Aft er
1732, the Company was only indirectly involved in slave
traffi cking. Most of its eff orts were for African exploration,
in which Africans were involved in moving inland in the
search of special raw materials and gold. Th e Company’s
new adventures were even less successful in raising revenue