The legitimate trade in commodities attracted a number of British merchants to the Niger River, as well as some men who had been formerly engaged in the slave trade but who now changed their line of wares. The large companies that subsequently opened depots in the delta cities and in Lagos were as ruthlessly competitive as the delta towns themselves and frequently used force to compel potential suppliers to agree to contracts and to meet their demands. To some extent, competition amongst these companies undermined their collective position vis-à-vis local merchants.
Ensign of the Royal Niger Company (1888–1899).
In the 1870s, therefore, George Taubman Goldie began amalgamating companies into the United African Company, soon renamed the National African Company. Ultimately, this became the Royal Niger Company.
The Royal Niger Company established its headquarters far inland at Lokoja, which was the main trading port of the company, from where it began to assume responsibility for the administration of areas along the Niger and Benue rivers where it maintained depots. It oon gained a virtual monopoly over trade along the River.
The company interfered in the territory along the Niger and the Benue, sometimes becoming embroiled in serious conflicts when its British-led native constabulary intercepted slave raids or attempted to protect trade routes. The company negotiated treaties with Sokoto, Gwandu and Nupe that were interpreted as guaranteeing exclusive access to trade in return for the payment of annual tribute. Officials of the Sokoto Caliphate considered these treaties quite differently; from their perspective, the British were granted only extraterritorial rights that did not prevent similar arrangements with the Germans and the French and certainly did not surrender sovereignty.
Even before gaining its charter, the Company signed treaties with local leaders which granted it broad sovereign powers. One 1885 treaty read:
We, the undersigned King and Chiefs […] with the view to the bettering of the condition of our country and people, do this day cede to the National Africa Company (Limited), their heirs and assigns, forever, the whole of our territory […] We also give the said National African Company (Limited) full power to settle all native disputes arising from any cause whatever, and we pledge ourselves not to enter into any war with other tribes without the sanction of the said National Africa Company (Limited).
We also understand that the said National African Company (limited) have full power to mine, farm, and build in any portion of our territory. We bind ourselves not to have any intercourse with any strangers or foreigners except through the said national African Company (Limited), and we give the said National African Company (Limited) full power to exclude all other strangers and foreigners from their territory at their discretion.
In consideration of the foregoing, the said National African Company (Limited) bind themselves not to interfere with any of the native laws or customs of the country, consistently with the maintenance of order and good government … [and] agree to pay native owners of land a reasonable amount for any portion they may require.
The said National African Company (Limited) bind themselves to protect the said King and Chiefs from the attacks of any neighbouring tribes (Ibid.).
The company considered itself the sole legitimate government of the area, with executive, legislative and judicial powers all subordinate to the rule of a council created by the company board of directors in London. The council was headed by a Governor. The Deputy Governor served as political administrator for company territory, and appointed three officials in Nigeria to carry out the work of administration. These were the Agent General, the Senior Judicial Officer, and the Commandant of the Constabulary. However, the company did accept that local kings could act as partners in governance and trade. It therefore hired native intermediaries who could conduct diplomacy, trade and intelligence work in the local area.
British stamps used in 1898 at Akassa by the Royal Niger Company.
The company, as was common among European businesses in Africa, paid its native workers in barter. At the turn of the century, top wages were four bags of salt (company retail price, 3s 9d) for a month of work. Trade was also conducted through a mechanism of barter and credit. Goods were made available on credit to African middlemen, who were expected to trade them at a pre-arranged price and deliver the proceeds to the company. The company’s major imports to the area included gin and low-quality firearms.
By the 1880s, the National African Company became the dominant commercial power, increasing from 19 to 39 stations between 1882 and 1893. In 1886, Taubman secured a royal charter and his company became the Royal Niger Company. The charter allowed the company to collect customs and make treaties with local leaders.
Under Goldie’s direction, the Royal Niger Company was instrumental in depriving France and Germany of access to the region. Consequently, he may well deserve the epithet of the “father of Nigeria”, which historians accorded him. He definitely laid the basis for British claims.
The Royal Niger Company had its own armed forces. This included a river fleet which it used for retaliatory attacks on uncooperative villages.
Britain’s imperialistic posture became more aggressive towards the end of the century. The appointment of Joseph Chamberlain as colonial secretary in 1895 especially marked a shift towards new territorial ambitions of the British Empire. Economically, local colonial administrators also pushed for the imposition of British colonial rule, believing that trade and taxation conducted in British pounds would prove far more lucrative than a barter trade which yielded only inconsistent customs duties.
[Attributions and Licenses]
"Central African Company" redirects here. For companies in the modern nation, see list of Central African companies. The Royal Niger Company was a mercantile company chartered by the British government in the nineteenth century. It was formed in 1879 as the United African Company and renamed to National African Company in 1881 and to Royal Niger Company in 1886. In 1929 the company became part of the United Africa Company,[1] which came under the control of Unilever in the 1930s and continued to exist as a subsidiary of Unilever until 1987, when it was absorbed into the parent company.[2]
The company existed for a comparatively short time (1879–1900) but was instrumental in the formation of Colonial Nigeria, as it enabled the British Empire to establish control over the lower Niger against the German competition led by Bismarck during the 1890s. In 1900, the company-controlled territories became the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, which was in turn united with the Northern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria in 1914 (which eventually gained independence within the same borders as Nigeria in 1960). The Royal Niger Company was eventually integrated into Unilever.
Richard Lander first explored the area of Nigeria as the servant of Hugh Clapperton. In 1830, he returned to the river with his brother John; in 1832, he returned again (without his brother) to establish a trading post for the "African Steamship Company"[3] at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers. The expedition failed, with 40 of the 49 members dying of fever or wounds from native attacks. One of the survivors, Macgregor Laird, subsequently remained in Britain but directed and funded expeditions to the country until his death in 1861. He opposed the failed Niger expedition of 1841 but the success of the Pleiad's first mission in 1854 led to annual trips under Baikie and the 1857 foundation of Lokoja at the Niger–Benue confluence.
There were no voyages for the three years following Laird's death, but the establishment of the West African Company was soon followed by several other firms. The competition reduced prices to the point that profits were minimal. Arriving in the region in 1877,[4] George Goldie argued for the amalgamation of the surviving British firms into a single monopolistic chartered company, a method contemporaries supposed had been buried with the ultimate failure of the East India Company following the Sepoy Rebellion. By 1879, he had helped combine James Crowther's WAC, David Macintosh's Central African Company, and the William Brothers' and James Pinnock's firms into a single United African Company; he then acted as the combined firm's agent in the territory.[5]
Almost immediately, the firm saw renewed competition as two French firms—the French Equatorial African Association and the Senegal Company—and another English one—the Liverpool and Manchester Trading Company—begin establishing posts on the river as well.[6] A native attack on the UAC's outpost at Onitsha in 1879 was repulsed with help from HMS Pioneer[5] but the Gladstone administration subsequently denied Goldie's attempt to procure a government charter in 1881, on the grounds that the international rivalry might occasion unnecessary conflict and that the united firm was undercapitalized for the expense of genuine colonial administration.[6]
George Goldie in 1898.
See also: Berlin Conference
Goldie first began addressing the administration's concerns by increasing the company's capitalization to £100 000. He then managed to corral £1 000 000 in investments in a new concern—the National African Company—which bought up the UAC and its interests in 1882.[7] The death of Léon Gambetta the same year deprived the French companies of their support within the French government and the strong subsidies it had been providing them.[6] Goldie's cash-flush NAC was then able to maintain 30 trading posts along the river[5] and ruin its competition in a two-year price war: by October 1884 all three had permitted him to buy out their interests in the region and the NAC's annual report for 1885 was able to crow that it "remained alone in undisputed commercial possession of the Niger–Binué region".[6]
This monopoly permitted Britain to resist French and German calls to internationalize trade on the Niger river during the negotiations at the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference on African colonization. Goldie himself attended the meetings and successfully argued for including the region of the NAC's operations within a British sphere of interest. Pledges from him and the British diplomats that free trade (or, in any case, non-discriminatory tariff rates) would be respected in their territory were dead letters: the NAC's over 400 treaties with local leaders obliged the natives to trade solely with or through the company's agents. Large tariffs and license fees eliminated competing firms from the area. The terms of these private contracts were made into general treaties by the British consuls, whose own treaties expressly incorporated them.[8] Similarly, when King Jaja of Opobo organized his own trading network and even began running his own shipments of palm oil to Britain, he was lured onto a British warship and shipped into exile on Saint Vincent on charges of "treaty breaking" and "obstructing commerce".[4]
Despite treaties extending British control over the tribes of the Cameroons, however, Britain was willing to recognize the German colony that usurped the area in 1885[8] as a check on French activity in the upper Congo and Ubangi watersheds.
The scruples of the British government being overcome, a charter was at length granted (July 1886), the National African Company becoming The Royal Niger Company Chartered and Limited[1] (normally shortened to the Royal Niger Company), with Lord Aberdare as governor and Goldie as vice-governor.[9]
It was, however, evidently impossible for a chartered company to hold its own against the state-supported protectorates of France and Germany, and in consequence its charter was revoked in 1899[10] and, on 1 January 1900, the Royal Niger Company transferred its territories to the British Government for the sum of £865,000. The ceded territory together with the small Niger Coast Protectorate, already under imperial control, was formed into the two protectorates of northern and southern Nigeria.[9]
The company changed its name to The Niger Company Ltd and in 1929 became part of the United Africa Company.[1] The United Africa Company came under the control of Unilever in the 1930s and continued to exist as a subsidiary of Unilever until 1987, when it was absorbed into the parent company.[2]
- Alhassan Dantata
- Royal Niger Company’s Medal
- Postage stamps and postal history of the Niger Territories
- Sokoto
- ^ a b c Baker, Geoffrey L (1996). Trade Winds on the Niger: Saga of the Royal Niger Company, 1830-1971. London: Radcliffe Press. ISBN 978-1860640148.
- ^ a b Tayo, Ayomide O. (26 July 2019). "How Nigeria transformed from a business into a country". Pulse NG. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
- ^ Baynes, T. S., ed. (1902). "Niger (river)". Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- ^ a b Máthé-Shires, László. "Lagos Colony and Oil Rivers Protectorate" in the Encyclopedia of African History, Vol. 3, pp. 791–792. Accessed 5 April 2014.
- ^ a b c Geary, Sir William N.M. (1927), pp. 174 ff.
- ^ a b c d McPhee, Allan. The Economic Revolution in British West Africa, pp. 75 ff. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. (Abingdon), 1926 and reprinted 1971. Accessed 4 April 2014.
- ^ "Chartered Companies" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 10th ed.
- ^ a b Geary, Sir William Nevill Montgomerie. Nigeria under British Rule, p. 95. Frank Cass & Co, 1927. Accessed 5 April 2014.
- ^ a b One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911a). "Goldie, Sir George Dashwood Taubman". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 211–212.
- ^ Falola, Toyin; Heaton, Matthew (2008). A History of Nigeria. Cambridge University Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0521681575.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Royal Niger Company.
- "Nigeria" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 677–684.
- "Lugard, Sir Frederick John Dealtry" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 115–116.
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