The African Company of Merchants was a British chartered company which existed from 1752 to 1821. During its existence, the company administered British trading posts in the Gold Coast region of modern-day Ghana and engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, illegally from 1807 onwards. Controversy in Britain over the company's continuing involvement in the slave trade after 1807 eventually contributed to its dissolution, with the Gold Coast becoming a formal British colony in 1821.