Cause or Coincidence

One of the most often-cited facts about James Oglethorpe—especially by those who argue his opposition to slavery was purely a matter of security—is his time as an Assistant Governor of the Royal African Company (RAC). The RAC, founded in 1660, held a monopoly on English trade along the West African coast. It seems it didn’t begin trading enslaved people until 1663, but by 1672 its charter explicitly covered “gold, silver, negroes, slaves, goods, wares, and merchandises whatsoever.”

That phrasing—the separate listing of “negroes” and “slaves”—is curious and worth looking into. It’s an odd distinction. By the 1680s, the company was transporting more than 5,000 enslaved Africans per year to English colonies in the Americas. Between 1672 and 1731, the total number reached a staggering 187,697 across 653 voyages—a horrific figure by any measure.

But the numbers tell an interesting story. Between 1726 and 1731, only 536 enslaved people were traded—a tiny fraction of earlier decades—and from 1732 onwards, the slave trade stopped entirely. Oglethorpe became a director of the company in 1731 and deputy governor in 1732, by which time the RAC was no longer a slave-trading enterprise. It had reverted to its original focus on gold and ivory.

It’s worth noting that the RAC was effectively bankrupt by this point, so the end of its involvement in the slave trade may have been more financial necessity than moral awakening. Still, it’s something I want to dig into further. The complete RAC archives are held at the National Archives in Kew, London—so I expect I’ll be spending quite a bit of time there!

Another point of interest is Oglethorpe’s resignation from the RAC at the very end of 1732. This happened around the same time as his involvement in the case of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo. Many have claimed that Oglethorpe’s compassion for Diallo triggered a dramatic moral conversion—a “Damascene moment” leading him to reject slavery outright. That’s possible, but there’s no evidence to support it.

A far more plausible explanation is simply that Oglethorpe was on the brink of founding the Georgia colony. The Royal Charter was granted on 9 June 1732, and that alone would have demanded his full attention. In that context, it would’ve been strange if he hadn’t resigned from the RAC.