Sovereignty Ltd: Sir George Goldie and the Rise of the Royal Niger Company
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Sovereignty Ltd: Sir George Goldie and the Rise of the Royal Niger Company Mahir Rafi Riaz Undergraduate Senior Thesis Department of History Columbia University 10th April 2019 Co-Advisor: Mamadou Diouf Co-Advisor: Marwa Elshakry Sir George Dashwood Taubman Goldie, KCMG FRS (20th May 1846 – 20th August 1925) 2 In loving memory of Nani, for filling my life with stories that made me ever so curious about the past *** 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Maps 6 Introduction 11 Chapter I: Incorporating Sovereignty 22 Chapter II: Contracting Sovereignty 34 Chapter III: Opening and Closing Markets 45 Conclusion 58 Bibliography 62 4 Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the support of several faculty members that have guided me, revised my writing and sharpened my thinking over the past few years. Special thanks go to Professors Mamadou Diouf and Marwa Elshakry for their steadfast support in extensively editing and commenting on several drafts of this paper, constantly challenging me to think beyond the confines of the archive and push the boundaries of my knowledge to put forth an original history of imperial expansion into West Africa. Professor Deborah Valenze has been an incredible help in thinking through the material and advising me both in and out of the classroom. Our coffees at Joe have been an integral part of my personal intellectual development at Columbia. Additionally, I would like to thank the department for supporting my research in London over the summer of 2018 through the Howard and Natalie Shawn Fellowship. I owe a great debt to all my peers in various disciplines for tolerating me throughout this process. Thank you especially to Bani Sapra and Theresa Yang, who since freshman year have had the painstaking responsibility of editing my writing and without whom this work would not have materialized. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support: my father, for tolerating my flirtations with academia for the past few years; my mother, for instilling in me a love for writing that I will carry for the rest of my life; my sister, for our ‘intellectual’ discussions; my cousin Maha, for her advice and, above all else, my Nani, for giving me the love and respect for history that has brought me to this point. 5 Map I: British Nigeria c. 1953 Geoffrey L. Baker, Trade Winds on the Niger: The Saga of the Royal Niger Company, 1930-1971 (London, UK: Radcliffe Press, 1996) 6 Map II: The Niger Delta c. 1953 Geoffrey L. Baker, Trade Winds on the Niger: The Saga of the Royal Niger Company, 1930-1971 (London, UK: Radcliffe Press, 1996) 7 Map III: Niger District c. 1887 Letter by Henry Morley, "No. 52 The Royal Niger Company to Foreign Office.–(Received March 23.)," March 21, 1887, FO 881/5610, Africa: Corres. Royal Niger Company Part 1, National Archives, London, U.K. 8 Map IV: Sokoto Caliphate Paul E. Lovejoy, "Plantations in the Economy of the Sokoto Caliphate," The Journal of African History 19, no. 3 (1978): 345. 9 *** Interviewer: “It would be interesting to know to what do you attribute the success of the Company?” Goldie: “Chiefly to our following a definite plan from the commencement, instead of growing up by accident. I do not mean that we have not modified details or plans under stress of circumstances, but in the main the policy conceived on the Niger in 1877 has been maintained to this day, and has been played out like a game of chess”. Reuters, July 5th 1899 *** 10 Introduction On New Year’s Day of 1900, the British government formally discharged the Royal Niger Company (RNC) from its administrative responsibilities and assumed the financial and logistical burden of administering the Niger Territories. Commenting on the transfer of power and his decision to disassociate from the company in an interview with Reuters in July of 1899, the RNC’s founder and pioneering force, Sir George Dashwood Taubman Goldie (1846 – 1925), explained, “There are two personal reasons for my ceasing to belong to the Company when it ceases to govern Nigeria. The only one that I choose to make public is one of pride”.1 Goldie’s name had become practically synonymous with both the RNC and Niger over the course of his twenty-three-year career. His commercial drive and political acumen had managed to build Britain’s presence in Nigeria by establishing the second British chartered company after the Royal African Company (RAC) to operate on the African continent (Map I). By the end of the company’s fourteen-year stint as an administrative and commercial powerhouse (1886 – 1900), however, Goldie’s attitude towards his own legacy was rather inauspicious. He reflected, “Probably my name will soon be forgotten in connection with Nigeria, and to this I am indifferent”.2 From a man who had done much in service of the Empire, this nonchalant attitude is perplexing. For Goldie’s sake, let us connect the dots. Little is known about Goldie’s personal affairs and perhaps that is how he wished it to be. Before his death, the Manxman had most of his private papers and correspondence burnt and forbade his children from writing anything about him, for fear of haunting them from the grave.3 1 D.J.M. Muffett, Empire Builder Extraordinary: Sir George Goldie His Philosophy of Government and Empire (Isle of Man, U.K.: Shearwater Press, 1978), 200. 2 Muffett, Empire Builder, 200. 3 John E. Flint, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria, West African History Series (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1960), vii. 11 This destruction has posed a great challenge for the few that have ventured to study his persona and company, but the Goldie that lives on in the archives of the Foreign Office and its correspondence with the RNC’s directors is nevertheless crucial for any student of British imperial history and the history of West Africa.4 He was the mastermind behind the company’s creation, expansion and its eventual transfer to the Crown. For historians who have studied the rise of the RNC to date, the focus has been Goldie’s own life story and journey through the Niger in both commercial and administrative capacities. These ‘histories’, however, tend to veer on the side of nostalgic narratives of Goldie’s ingenuity, rather than critical assessments of the commercial and administrative apparatus he built over the course of his career. Above all else, these few works urge but do not answer the question: to what extent did private enterprise dictate Britain’s relationship with the Niger territories? This study examines the way in which commercial interests shaped Britain’s relationship with the Niger during the ‘scramble’ for Africa (1870s-1890s). Ultimately, it demonstrates (i) that corporate and political maneuvering by Goldie and the RNC enabled Britain to stake a claim to the Niger territories in a ‘scramble’ that began towards the end of the 1870s, (ii) that sovereignty was a crucial element of the RNC’s business model, such that the company’s commercial viability was contingent on excluding competition and developing a monopsonisitic marketplace, and (iii) that imperial expansion into the Niger was the byproduct of Goldie’s vision of free trade that simply meant allowing the RNC to operate with impunity. 4 See: Dorothy Wellesley, Sir George Goldie, Founder of Nigeria: A Memoir (London, U.K.: Macmillan Press, 1934).; John E. Flint, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria, West African History Series (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1960).; D.J.M. Muffett, Empire Builder Extraordinary: Sir George Goldie His Philosophy of Government and Empire (Isle of Man, U.K.: Shearwater Press, 1978).; & Geoffrey L. Baker, Trade Winds on the Niger: The Saga of the Royal Niger Company, 1930-1971 (London, UK: Radcliffe Press, 1996). 12 As this study reveals, it was Goldie who laid the foundations for any substantial British claim to the land along the Niger and Benue rivers for the sole purpose of securing his commercial interests. By the late 1880s, the British presence in the Niger territories was the product of Goldie’s commercial and political maneuvers that made the company both a monopolistic and administrative bulwark against indigenous and foreign competition. The grant of a royal charter allowed the company to become a quasi-sovereign entity, and the administrative, judicial and policing powers enshrined in the charter permitted it to both participate in and regulate the trade such that, by the end of the 1880s, the RNC had secured an effective trading monopoly along the rivers to dictate the terms of commerce.5 In sum, Goldie’s commercial maneuvering in the Niger delta and his political maneuvering at home combined to enable him to build a profitable company-state at the forefront of Britain’s West African scramble. The RNC’s rise is just one example of the way in which British enterprise and ‘big business’ penetrated the African continent in the late nineteenth century.6 It was the first attempt at reviving the chartered company model in Africa but certainly not the last.7 After Goldie secured a royal charter in 1886, both Mackinnon’s Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC, 1888) and Rhodes’ British South Africa Company (BSAC, 1889) soon followed suit. 5 A Royal Charter was a legal instrument of incorporation granted by the Crown to select companies that gave them distinct, quasi sovereign responsibilities and objectives. Examples include the East India Company (EIC), Royal African Company (RAC), Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC), British South African Company (BSAC) and the RNC, to name a few. 6 See Anthony G.