Archival Materials on the Brandenburg African Company (1682-1721)

Abstract

Brandenburg-Prussia was the last European power to enter the African trade in the seventeenth century. In an attempt to emulate the success of the Dutch West India Company, the Great Elector granted a charter to a newly-created company in 1682. It was known under various names--as the Electoral Brandenburg African Company, the Emden Company, the Brandenburg Afro-American Company, and (after the Great Elector's successor had made himself “King in Prussia” in 1701) the Royal Prussian African Company. By 1686 it had acquired a fort and two trading posts on the western Gold Coast and a fort on the island of Arguin (now part of Mauritania). Through an agreement with the Danish crown, it was also allowed to occupy a small part of the Caribbean island of St. Thomas and sell slaves there. Nevertheless, the company never really got off the ground, and from about 1698 onwards, as its fortunes steadily declined, its representatives in Africa were left more and more to their own devices. Lacking support from Europe, the last Brandenburg-Prussian Director-General abandoned the Gold Coast in 1716, and five years later Arguin was captured by the French.In most respects the company was more Dutch than German. Its formation was the work of Benjamin Raule, the Great Elector's Dutch-born Naval Director; a large proportion of its capital, merchandise, and ships came from the Netherlands; and from about 1698 (if not earlier) the Brandenburg forts in Africa did more trade with Zeeland interlopers and English “ten per cent” ships than with vessels sent by the company. Furthermore, all but one of the Directors-General on the Gold Coast and Commandants at Arguin were Dutchmen (usually former servants of the Dutch West India Company), as were more than half of their subordinates. It is not surprising, therefore, that about three-quarters of the surviving records are in Dutch.