Traders and Chartered Companies

1The source: what did Lobengula sign?

On 30 October 1888, at his capital Bulawayo, Lobengula, King of the Ndebele (in today's Zimbabwe), put his mark on a document prepared by Charles Rudd, an agent of the businessman Cecil Rhodes. A missionary, Charles Helm, interpreted and signed as a witness. In return for £100 a month, 1,000 rifles, 100,000 cartridges and a steamboat on the Zambezi, the king granted:

"the complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals situated and contained in my kingdoms, principalities, and dominions, together with full power to do all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same [...]"

The Rudd Concession, 30 October 1888 (English original).

Within months Lobengula was protesting. In August 1889 he wrote again to the British government:

"If the Queen hears that I have given away the whole country, it is not so."

And he explained his position to Helm with a picture: the chameleon creeps slowly up behind the fly, then "darts out his tongue and the fly disappears. England is the chameleon and I am that fly."

Analyse it. The missionary Charles Helm, whom the king called in to interpret, later reported that Rudd had made spoken promises that were not in the written text: "that they would not bring more than 10 white men to work in his country, that they would not dig anywhere near towns, etc., and that they and their people would abide by the laws of his country". The paper, in English, said "full power to do all things". Lobengula put his mark on the written version, and his council was divided over it. Rhodes used the concession to win a royal charter for his British South Africa Company in 1889, and in 1890 his company's armed column occupied Mashonaland. A piece of paper about minerals became the legal basis for taking a country.

2Traders: the first agents

Long before the Scramble, European traders were already on Africa's coasts. After Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, merchants turned to "legitimate trade": palm oil from the Niger Delta for soap and machine oil, groundnuts from Senegal, ivory and later rubber. Traders acted as colonial agents in four ways:

• Information: they reported on routes, rulers and resources, and urged their governments to act.
• Treaties: they signed agreements with local rulers that their governments later used as claims.
• Demands for protection: when African rulers taxed or resisted them, they called on their navies and consuls.
• Dependence: they made coastal economies rely on European goods, including guns, cloth and alcohol.

In East Africa the main long-distance traders were Arab-Swahili caravans from the coast and Zanzibar, trading in ivory and enslaved people. European "anti-slavery" campaigns against this trade became another reason given for intervention.

3Chartered companies: empire on the cheap

In the 1880s European governments wanted African territory but did not want to pay for it. Parliaments refused the cost of armies and officials. The answer was the chartered company: let investors pay for conquest and administration, and give them a monopoly and the profits in return.

4The activities of chartered companies

1. Signing treaties and concessions with African rulers, often misunderstood or misrepresented, as with the Rudd Concession.
2. Keeping private armies and police that fought African states: the BSAC's forces against the Ndebele, the DOAG against the coastal towns.
3. Running trade monopolies and collecting customs duties, as the Royal Niger Company did on the Niger.
4. Building infrastructure to move goods: roads, steamers on the lakes and later railways.
5. Governing: courts, taxes and officials, all paid for by the company.
6. Keeping rivals out: each company's treaties gave its government a claim against other Europeans.

Why most failed. Governing was expensive and rarely profitable. African resistance (the Abushiri revolt, the Ndebele and Shona risings) cost money and lives; the companies' own violence and abuses embarrassed their governments; and they could not compete with rivals backed by whole states. So, one after another, the states took over: the company had cleared the way, then the flag replaced it.

Rwanda connection. No company ever ruled Rwanda directly. But the German East Africa Company's claims of 1885 began the colony of German East Africa; after the company's failure the German state ruled it directly from 1891, the Anglo-German (Heligoland–Zanzibar) treaty of 1890 fixed the border between German and British East Africa, and German East Africa came to include today's Rwanda and Burundi, although its exact borders were not surveyed until 1910. The way Rwanda came under German rule is the subject of unit 7.