III. The North-West African Company and the British Government, 1875–95

It is well known that trading companies played an important role in the formation of British colonies during the Partition of Africa. Eventual developments in areas such as Nigeria, Rhodesia and East Africa, however, have tended to give a false impression of the relations between commercial undertakings and the British Government. It has been suggested that the authorities deliberately used chartered companies for imperialist purposes. 1 Contemporary observers, too, suspected the existence of a comprehensive plan whereby it was ‘to private initiative that the British Government at first leaves the task of paving the way for its political designs’. 2 But in actual fact official circles were usually extremely reluctant to extend their obligations, and at a time when interest in expansion is generally assumed to have been great and growing were still by no means always willing even to grant a Royal Charter to any newly-formed Company that applied for one. One such undertaking that became painfully aware of this was the North-West African Company, a now-forgotten concern that has left no mark on the modern map. Nevertheless, an account of its history, of the means which it used to try to enrol official support and of the attitude of the British Government is not without interest as a qualification of the usual view of the years 1875–95, which have too often been treated as dominated by a ‘scramble’ for overseas territory and a ruthless struggle for new markets and sources of raw material

Charter · Economics · Economy · Government (linguistics · Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

• Commerce and empire

  Barrie M Ratcliffe•The Journal of Imperial &…•1979

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• IV. The Proposed Madrid Conference on Morocco, 1887–88

  Open Access•F V PARSONS•The Historical Journal•1965

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• Trade and politics in the Niger delta 1830-1885

  K Onwuka Dike•Trade and politics in the Niger…•1956

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• European Colonial Expansion Since 1871

  Carroll B Malone, Mary Evelyn Townsend et al.•The Far Eastern Quarterly•1942

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