of London (initially authorized during the reign of Henry IV) was revived and
chartered in 1552 , just as the first sustained wave of African expeditions was
under way, but its primary purpose was to find a northeast route to Asia.^24
And while the Barbary trade would eventually be managed through a char-
tered company, the West African expeditions never would. Instead, the
Guinea ventures were financed one by one by temporary syndicates, many of
their backers becoming members of the Muscovy Company (chartered in
1555 ).^25 Because the Portuguese effectively held “their” ground in the region,
England’s initiatives stalled out within less than two decades, ending with
George Fenner’s voyage to Guinea in 1567. Although the English did under-
take a couple of missions to Benin at the end of the century, once the Turks
were defeated at Lepanto in 1571 and access to the Levant and the East Indies
reopened, England lost its interest in West Africa almost entirely. Not until
James’s reign did an African company organize—the Company of Adventur-
ers of London (chartered in 1618 )—but even then without much sustained
success.^26 And not until 1631 did the English establish their first permanent
African outpost.^27 Under Charles I, the English intervened in the African
trades and had some success with sugar plantations. African projects really did
not gain footing, however, until after the Restoration, when they fell, tellingly,
under the wing of the East India Company.^28
The Atlantic slave trade would, of course, put Africa distinctly on the
map. But, as I have suggested, this part of Africa’s and England’s history did
not develop substantially until the mid-seventeenth century, its implications
neither predictable nor certain when English venturers first set out for Bar-
bary and Guinea or when English playwrights brought the Moor to center
stage a few decades later.^29 The Portuguese began transporting African slaves
to Europe, São Tomé, the Atlantic Islands, New Spain, and Brazil in the fif-
teenth century.^30 But it was only at the end of the sixteenth century, and with
the burgeoning of the sugar plantations in Brazil, that Portuguese involve-
ment in Atlantic slaving escalated, creating an “Atlantic plantation complex”
that would ultimately revolutionize Europe’s view of Africa as well as of the
New World, though not for some time.^31 Granted, William Hawkins had
tested a three-pronged trade between England, West Africa, and Brazil in the
1530 s, following the early model of the Portuguese, and his son John revived
these efforts and headed three slaving voyages in the 1560 s.^32 The prospects
and promise of these initiatives were so limited and uncertain, however, that
no one followed up for almost a century.^33 Even when the English began to
develop colonial projects in the New World, initially these efforts were not
50 chapter two