The Royal African Company was in the news in 2020 when the toppling of Edward Colston's statue made global headlines. Colston had been a key figure in the history of the company and had become wealthy due to his involvement in the slave and sugar trades. A renewed interest in the individuals involved in the slave trade makes the publication of Julie Mo Svalastog's Mastering the Worst of Trades: England's Early Africa Companies and Their Traders, 1618–1672 particularly timely. Svalastog is keen to highlight the role of particular merchants in the early English companies trading to Africa. She outlines the ways in which they could act in their own interests when it suited them. However, she also demonstrates that they were sometimes willing to use their personal credit and connections to support a joint enterprise. We see much of the inner workings of the early companies as they moved from the control of an aristocratic elite into the hands of experienced merchants. Historians of slavery have long known that the early companies existed but did not know much about how they operated. Svalastog aims to fill that gap.

Svalastog outlines the Anglo-African trade in the period before the Royal African Company. This subject has not been given much attention, due in part to a relative lack of primary sources. Svalastog makes some important new contributions. Firstly, she highlights the importance of the bilateral trade between Europe and Africa before the move to transatlantic trading. Secondly, she focuses on the individual traders involved and their use of their personal connections and credit. Svalastog shows how the trading patterns changed from commodities to slavery, which was the “worst of trades.” It is interesting to note that the Anglo-African trade was not initially focused on slavery, nor was it set in its later triangular trading pattern. Svalastog also chronicles the involvement of the East India Company in West African trading.

Mastering the Worst of Trades is based on Svalastog's work when she was part of a larger research group at the University of Leiden. The group focuses on the role of individual agency in response to colonial monopolies, and Svalastog's work clearly fits in with this approach. She has diligently combed the archives for legal cases and government documents to fill in gaps in company records. She has succeeded in piecing together a history of both the Guinea Company and the Royal Adventurers, which will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered what came before the Royal African Company. Svalastog has also highlighted which individuals were involved and when. Many of these merchants were obscure in origin, but some went on to become very wealthy indeed due to their nefarious activities. For example, James Drax of the Drax Hall Estate in Barbados appears. It would be useful to have the linkages between these early merchants and their wealthy descendants more clearly drawn, even if just in an appendix.

There are some issues regarding the presentation of the material. There is a bibliography after each chapter and a main bibliography as well. This practice takes up space and repeats the same information. Svalastog's writing style is somewhat circular and repetitive. There are too many lengthy quotations from primary sources that do not really add anything but are difficult to read. They are not indented from the text. The choice of illustrations is also idiosyncratic. The only map is quite small and simplified. There are a number of photographs of people's signatures, but is not clear why these are important. Svalastog provides lists of names in the appendices, but short biographies would be helpful. This could also act as an aide memoire as some of the players were related to each other by blood or marriage. Svalastog occasionally makes an argument without providing any evidence for it. For instance, she claims that the Portuguese had a “fanatic religion” (30), which made them aggressive toward their potential trading partners in Africa, yet she provides no sources for this assertion. If the book runs to a second edition, these issues can be ironed out.

On balance, Mastering the Worst of Trades will be a very useful addition to the historiography of the English (later British) slave trade. It fleshes out a story that needs to be told but has been long overlooked. Svalastog has managed to find out a great deal of information about merchants whose activities should be better known. She has made the case that they were not always loyal to their company's interests, but their private credit was sometimes needed to keep the trade going. She details the transition from the bilateral trade in goods to the transatlantic slave trade. Fortuitously, her work has appeared in print just when public interest in the British slave trade is at a peak. One hopes that the book will be read by both nonspecialists and historians of slavery.