"A Secret Triangle Trade: The Royal African Company Versus the Private Trading Ring of James Phipps, William Baillie, and Humphry Morice"

One of the thorniest issues facing early-modern joint-stock firms like the Royal African Company (RAC) was “private trade”; in other words, their own employees going into competition with them, using information they learned and sometimes even goods they misappropriated through their employment with the company. Allegations of private trade were among the chief reasons for the RAC’s recall in 1723 of James Phipps, its Agent-General in charge of all its West African trading operations. While previous researchers have dismissed these allegations as unfounded, and pointed to the RAC’s system of requiring bonds for their employees’ good behavior as a sign of the trading efficiency of joint-stock companies in general, two sources actually cast doubt upon both these propositions, and establish Phipps’s extensive involvement in private trade.
The first of these sources is the secret letterbook of Phipps’ subordinate, William Baillie, who as RAC station chief in the West African port of Whydah organized a clandestine trade link to slave purchasers from Brazil, with the active connivance of Phipps but without the knowledge of RAC higher-ups in London. The second source is the papers of Humphry Morice, the foremost independent slave trader in London at the time and therefore the RAC’s main competitor. Morice advanced large quantities of goods to Baillie for sale to his Brazilian trade partners, and suffered heavy loss when Baillie died in deep debt to him. The information extracted from these sources establishes Phipps’s complicity, and more generally calls into question the effectiveness of the countermeasures taken by joint-stock companies against private trading.