The Royal African Company & the legacies of slave-ownership
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Royal African Company – Coat of Arms
Leadenhall Street was a previous hot spot for slave owners, and more significantly, housed the Royal African Company, an English trading company set up in 1660 that grew to become the largest commercial business of the slave trade. Shipping more enslaved people to the Americas than any other trading firm, the Royal African Company remains an important part of British history. King Charles II granted the company a Royal Charter in 1663, and its credibility and magnitude began to grow. The Charter codified the company’s monopoly, allowing them to control
‘the whole, entire and only trade for buying and selling, bartering and exchanging for or with any negros, slaves, goods… whatsoever’ in Western Africa.
The original Royal Charter of 1663
The trade was huge, and not just limited to the City of London, with domestic industries in cities like Liverpool and Bristol also benefitting from the business. The company shipped a total of 212,000 slaves, with 44,000 tragically dying along the way. Essentially leading, and sustaining the slave trade, the Royal African Company headquarters, which once stood before you, had a vast impact on global trade, and the domestic wealth of Britain. Whilst the building does not exist anymore, its legacy lives on.
Even after the collapse of the Company in 1708, its economic impact could still be felt through the compensation pay out that secured the freedom of those enslaved in 1833. Slave owners were compensated £20 million (the modern equivalent of £17 billion) for their loss of property. British tax payers only recently payed off this extraordinary debt in 2015. On Leadenhall Street alone, 66 records indicate a number of individuals who received varying amounts in compensation. For example, Edmund Francis Green received thousands for his slave-related interests in Grenada, St Lucia, and Trinidad. Just from his Grenada estate alone, he was awarded £3058 in compensation.
Click here to navigate to UCL’s Legacies of British Slavery database to search up your family surname or explore your company’s links to the trade.
The Gilt of Cain, just around the corner from Leadenhall Street, is a memorial to the victims of the oppressive slave-trade.