England’s King James I charters the Guinea Company, a private joint-stock enterprise that gained exclusive trading privileges in West Africa

The Company of Adventurers of London Trading to the Ports of Africa, more commonly known as the Guinea Company, initially concentrated on the redwood trade in Gambia and searching for gold in Sierra Leone.  One of the first English-language descriptions of West Africa, Richard Jobson’s The Golden Trade, published in London in 1623, reported on the Guinea Company’s failed efforts to locate inland sources of African gold.