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" Essays on the Royal African Company and the slave trade "
Corpuz, Jose R. T.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1103540
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TLets801174
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| Main Entry
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Corpuz, Jose R. T.
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| Title & Author
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Essays on the Royal African Company and the slave trade\ Corpuz, Jose R. T.
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| College
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University of Warwick
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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The Royal African Company of England traded European commodities, such as alcohol, cloth, and _rearms, for African goods and slaves. The Company sold stock to finance its business activities and paid local chiefs in West Africa for exclusive access to trade. Chapter 1 of the thesis studies rent-seeking associated with the slave trade in West Africa. Chapter 2 examines trade and ownership of stock by elites and non-elites. Chapter 3 analyses turning points in the number of slaves exported from Africa and its individual regions. In Chapter 1, I measure rent-seeking in the slave trade using new data from archival sources. In seventeenth-century Ghana, the Royal African Company paid African chiefs for exclusive access to trade along the caravan routes. The total value of these payments was 18 times a Company agent's salary and 145 times the annual cost of living. The Glorious Revolution in 1688 facilitated competition from other English merchants, and payments increased after this. Using an event study, I find that payments increased the most to chiefs in locations where they could stop or redirect trade coming from inland to the coast. The Company made larger payments to chiefs whose cooperation was most important in deterring other English merchants from competing with the Company. The highest-ranking chiefs received the highest value of payments per capita. European cloth was the most sought after type of payment - head chiefs used European cloth for prestige and received most of the European cloth. In Chapter 2, I examine Royal African Company stock transfers from 1672 to 1712. I highlight three new stylized facts. Firstly, neither elites nor non-elites dominated stock transfers before the book value of stock quadrupled in 1691, suggesting that the experience of the capital market was widespread among elites and non-elites. Secondly, the decreased share in stock transferred by some types of elites between 1685 and 1690 occurred against the background of political events that reduced the Company's future prospects. Thirdly, non-elites dominated the buying and selling of stock after the stock was quadrupled in 1691, suggesting that Company decisions played a major role in explaining its capital market experience. In the final chapter, Chapter 3, I determine to what extent turning points in slave exports were unique to specific regions, and to what extent they were common across all of Africa. I use the Bai and Perron (2003) structural break test to show that slave exports from all of Africa began falling in 1815. This is earlier than the traditional view in the literature that the slave trade effectively ended in the 1850s. Demand shocks, particularly the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, are relatively important in explaining the end of the slave trade at the regional level. The downward-sloping trend of slave exports began in 1784 for the Bight of Biafra, 1808 for the Windward and Gold Coasts, and 1815 for the Bight of Benin, West Central Africa, and Southeast Africa. Supply shocks, such as wars and conflicts, are relatively important in explaining the dynamics of the slave trade in specific regions.
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| Subject
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D History (General)
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HC Economic History and Conditions
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HD Industries. Land use. Labor
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| Added Entry
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University of Warwick
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