Mastering the worst of trades : England's early Africa companies and their traders, 1618-1672

"This book directs its main focus to the Guinea Company and its members, aiming to understand the genealogy of several major changes taking place in the English Atlantic and in the Anglo-Africa trade in the 17th century and beyond. Little focus has been directed at the companies that preceded the Royal African Company, launched in 1672, and through presenting the Guinea Company - the earliest of England's chartered Africa companies, and its relationship with the influential men who became its members, the book questions the inevitability of the Atlantic reality of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through its members, the Guinea Company emerged as a purpose-built structure with the ability to weather a volatile trade undergoing fundamental change"--