African Company of Merchants facility locations
*The founding of the African Company of Merchants is affirmed on this date in 1752. This was a British chartered slave trading company operating from 1752 to 1821 in the Gold Coast area of modern Ghana. The indigenous Fante people dominated this coastal area. It was established by the African Company Act of 1750, and, in 1752, replaced the Royal African Company established in 1660.
The assets of the Royal African Company were transferred to the new company. They consisted primarily of nine trading posts or factories: Fort William, Fort James, Fort Sekondi, Fort Winneba, Fort Apollonia, Fort Tantumquery, Fort Metal Cross, Fort Komenda, and Cape Coast Castle, the last of which was the administrative center.
The company was managed by the African Committee, which was composed of nine committee members, three each from London, Liverpool, and Bristol. These were elected from the general body of traders from these cities, who paid 40 shillings to be admitted to the company. The company was financed by an annual grant approved by Parliament, which covered the costs of the London office and the forts. The committee had to report to the Exchequer, the Admiralty, and, from 1782, the Secretary of War. The imperial government prohibited the African slave trade after 1807, although the company continued to operate for years afterward.
In keeping with the ethos of liberal reform, administrative authority over the African Company's territory was transferred to Governor Charles MacCarthy of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone, having been founded as a refuge colony for freed formerly enslaved people. (Governor McCarthy was subsequently killed in the First Anglo-Asante War.) In 1817, the company signed a treaty of friendship recognizing the Asante claims to sovereignty over large coastal areas, including areas claimed by the Fante. However, after it became public knowledge that the company continued the slave trade within its privately held territory, the British government abolished it in 1821.
