e oppression and abuses were charged against it by
would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697
restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea
upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent,
on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on
certain minor exports carried thence.

[Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R.
Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of
England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.]

The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil
practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at
reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage
subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its
trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages
as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock
sold as low as 2-1/8 on the L100. A reorganization in 1712 however added
largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new
prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders
of all dues, substituting a public grant of L10,000 a year toward the
maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company,
managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequal
contest until 1751 when it was dissolved.

The company regime under the several flags was particularly dominant on the
coasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century they
reached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The French
were secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on the
Gambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the trade
between them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sight
of each other: El Mina of the Dutch, and Cape Coast Castle of the English.
Each was commanded by a governor and garrisoned by a score or two of
soldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps a
dozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a few
bookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and an
abundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants.
The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, often
standing no