The Dutch and English vied for lucrative trade along Africa’s West Coast in the mid-seventeenth century. During this period the English produced guinea coins marked with an elephant-and-castle motif below a bust of the English king, James II. The motif was stamped only onto coins made from West African gold acquired by the newly established Royal Africa Company, which was granted a monopoly on this trade by the British crown in 1672. This iconography illustrates the continuing importance of gold and ivory as commodities, even as trade shifted away from Saharan routes.
