1672 – 1752: The English Royal African Company was founded, eventually growing into the largest single slave-trading business in the history of transatlantic…

1672 – 1752: The English Royal African Company was founded, eventually growing into the largest single slave-trading business in the history of transatlantic traffic. Granted a crown-sanctioned monopoly on English trade with Africa, the company built and managed numerous fortified factories along the coastline. Despite its early commercial dominance, the company eventually faced financial decline as its monopoly privileges were terminated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was finally dissolved in 1752, after decades of struggling against independent British merchants who sought a share of the lucrative trade.