The Public Life and Death of a Propertied, but Artificial Person

Abstract

This chapter uses the divestment of the Royal African Company (1747–1752) to shed light on a central question posed by Paul Langford’s work: how did the eighteenth-century British Parliament reconcile its primacy within the British state’s regulatory apparatus with its role as the upholder of the sanctity of property? Between 1747 and 1752, a series of statutes dissolved the Royal African Company, divested it of its African properties (including forts and enslaved people) and transferred these assets to a new (non-corporate) body. Parliament distributed £112,142 of public funds to compensate the Company’s creditors (including several of its former officers) and proprietors. The chapter explores the distinctive challenges posed to the legislature of corporate property. It places the African Company divestment into the larger history of corporate dissolution across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the ways in which constitutional changes altered that process. It uses the African Company case to challenge those who have depicted Parliament’s actions in undermining private property as compulsory. The chapter instead emphasizes the negotiations and compromises and the wilful leadership the Company took in the process of ending its life. The chapter offers a full prosopographical analysis of the recipients of compensation. The importance of former officers of the African Company in the list of major recipients confirms that public concern about Britain’s prestige on the African coast proved crucial to the passing of this legislation.