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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

F. V. Parsons
F. V. Parsons
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

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.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , June 1958 , pp. 136 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1958

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References

1 E.g. Staley, E., War and the Private Investor (Chicago, 1935), 305Google Scholar: ‘The device of the chartered company… afforded a convenient screen behind which a government could pursue expansionist purposes in an exploratory tentative way’; Townsend, M. E. and Peake, C. H., European Colonial Expansion since 1871 (Chicago, 1941), 14: ‘An additional “pre-colonial” technique is the chartered company.’Google Scholar

2 Ordéga no. 62, 4 June 1883, A[rchives des] A[ffaires] É[trangères], Maroc, vol. 47. All diplomatic representatives whose dispatches to or from their foreign secretaries are cited held their post at Tangier unless otherwise stated.

3 This article is based mainly on the Foreign Office archives, especially a series of nine volumes of which the first, entitled ‘Africa (West Coast) Correspondence Respecting Mr D. Mackenzie's Expedition to Cape Juby, 1875–1880’, is in the Africa and Slave Trade series, F.O. 84/1500, and the others, headed ‘The North-West African Company at Cape Juby’, are in the Morocco political correspondence, F.O. 99. Mackenzie's The Khalifate of the West (1911), chs. 17–19, gives his own brief account of the Company's operations. All references for the years 1875–80 are from F.O. 84/1500 unless otherwise stated.

4 Mackenzie and General A. Cotton to Lord Derby, 12 July 1875.

5 Mackenzie, ‘Statement on the subject of opening up Central Africa to Commerce and Civilization from the North-West Coast’, 25 June 1878.

6 Prospectus of the North-West African Expedition, 1875, C[olonial] O[ffice archives], vol. 267/328.

7 The appendices to this book give details of this publicizing, together with copies of letters from sympathizers such as Sir Battle Frere. Meetings were held, inter alia, at the London Mansion House, the Society of Arts, Bath, Bristol, Bradford and Liverpool. Favourable press notices can be seen in the Daily Telegraph, 2 Apr. 1875, The Times, 7 Aug. 1875, the Liverpool Daily Post, 1 Nov. 1875 and the Bradford Observer, 11 Dec. 1877.

8 E. Hertslet, Map of Africa by Treaty (3rd edn., 1909), 11, 537, gives an extract from Mackenzie's agreement with ‘Sheikh Mohammed Bairook of Aghameen’, a full copy of which is in F.O. 84/1500.

9 This designation never became fashionable, and ‘Cape Juby’ was almost invariably used. The Arabic ‘Tarfaya’ and ‘Port St Bartholomew’, the last a relic of Portuguese fifteenth-century exploration, are also occasionally found.

10 Prospectus of the North-West African Expedition, 1875, C.O. 267/328; Flooding of the Sahara, 8, 206.

11 R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Al Moghreb-el-Acksa (1898), 160: ‘Mackenzie's name was known far into the Sahara…At times natives would ride up, who had never seen him, and greet him as Sidi Mackenzie, for they had all heard of his red beard, his title (Scotchman) and the strong spirit kept in a barrel which none but he could drink.’ The last item of information is not confirmed elsewhere.

12 For information on the trading operations one has to depend on the all too imprecise reports made by those concerned to the F.O. In March-April 1890, a good period, it was claimed that 265,000 lb. of wool was received. Apart from Manchester goods, wheat and barley were at times provided in exchange. The item most desired by the nomad Arabs was undoubtedly a good rifle. Mackenzie did not propose to supply this need, but in later years some such effort seems to have been attempted.

13 Mackenzie, in letters of 12 July 1875 and 17 Jan. 1878, talked of attracting the trade of the Western Sudan, an estimated £4,000,000 a year, which could be ‘easily increased tenfold’. The British Consul at Mogador (Report enclosed in J. D. Hay, no. 37 Commercial, 12 Sept. 1875) gave the more prosaic figure for trade between Morocco and the Sudan of £130,000. The recent discovery of oil in the Sahara and attempts to export iron ore via the West African coast may require a reappraisal of the potential wealth of the area in the more immediate vicinity of Cape Juby. But no such specific schemes were in the minds of any person, official or non-official, at the time.

14 Mackenzie, Report of 22 Aug. 1876, enclosed in Edwards (Teneriffe), no. 25, 24 Aug. 1876.

15 Spanish expansionists considered that N.W. Africa in general, the land of the Moors, was destined for historical and geographical reasons to fall to Spain, and all Spanish governments were very touchy concerning any activity in its vicinity. The Canary Islanders, moreover, had an understandable interest in events on the opposite African Coast.

16 Hay, no. 11, 29 Jan. 1879.

17 Capt. à Court (Intelligence Department, War Office), Memo, on French Aims in Southern Algeria, 12 Apr. 1892, F.O. 99/309.

18 H. P. White (Chargé d'Affaires), no. 2 Slave Trade, 16 Aug. 1879. For Morocco's ancient claims to the Sudan, of some political importance again since the granting of independence, see E. M. Bovill, Caravans of the Old Sahara (1933) and Fage, J. D., An Introduction to the History of West Africa (Cambridge, 1955), 30–2.Google Scholar

19 Hay, no. 59 Conf. 9 July 1883, F.O. 99/242.

20 Mackenzie to Carnarvon, 24 June 1875 and minutes thereon, CO. 267/328; R. G. W. Herbert (Colonial Office) to F.O., 13 Aug. 1875; Lord Derby, minute on letter from Mackenzie of 12 July 1875, ‘I cannot conceive this scheme coming to any result’.

21 Herbert to F.O., 13 Aug. 1875: minutes on Mackenzie's letter of 12 July 1875 by Lord Tenterden (Permanent Under-Secretary), H. C. Eliot and J. E. B. Dashwood.

22 Derby to Mackenzie, 12 Aug. 1875. A F.O. Circular, Commercial, of 8 Mar. 1881 (F.O. 99/199) is relevant on this point:‘… letters of introduction given… in favour of British subjects… to enable them to obtain access to the authorities before whom they desire to lay proposals for…promoting any Commercial or industrial undertaking must not, under any circumstances, be construed as committing the Home Government to the promoting of any particular enterprise, but only as intended to ensure for the bearer that he should meet with such a reception as a traveller of respectability is entitled to.’

23 Derby, no. 9 Consular to Hay and no. 6 to Edwards (Teneriffe), 12 Aug. 1875: Hay, no. 36 Consular, 27 Aug. 1875, F.O. 99/170. Hay at the time did not think that the question would concern him, and his private opinion was that the Foreign Secretary ‘might as well have asked me to aid the Naval expedition to the North Pole’ (Brooks, L. A. E., A Memoir of Sir John Drummond Hay (1896), 317).Google Scholar

24 Derby, minute on Mackenzie's letter of 22 Sept. 1875.

25 Salisbury, minute on Mackenzie's Report of 25 Jan. 1879; Salisbury, no. 1 Slave Trade to Dundas (Teneriffe), 2 Oct. 1878.

26 T.V. Lister (Assistant Under-Secretary), minute on Mackenzie's application of 25 June 1878.

27 Minutes on Mackenzie's letter of 15 Nov. 1879 by Sir Julian Pauncefote (Assistant Under-Secretary) and Salisbury.

28 As was pointed out to the Spanish Government, Britain, ‘until Mackenzie's expedition brought up the question, was not aware that the Sultan claimed jurisdiction beyond the Wadi Draa’ (Salisbury, no. 40 Slave Trade to West (Madrid), 31 Oct. 1879). The French and German Ministers at Tangier were originally in agreement with the British standpoint. Vernouillet (in no. 8, 28 Feb. 1881, A.A.E. Maroc, vol. 45) admits that Cape Juby did not figure ‘even nominally’, among the possessions of Morocco, and Weber states (in no. 83, 19 Nov. 1880, F.O. 553/172/U.C.I. Reel 209, microfilm copy of the German archives) that the tribes from the Draa to Juby are ‘ganz unabhaengig’.

29 The official most sympathetic to Mackenzie's case was the head of the Consular and Slave Trade Department, W. H. Wylde. Cf. his minute on Dundas (Teneriffe), no. 10 Conf., 26 Apr. 1879: ’Mr Mackenzie may fairly claim to be protected from the hostility of the Empire of Morocco or of the Spaniards in endeavouring to open fresh Markets for the Manufactures of this country’, and his opinion of 16 Sept. 1879: ‘I do not see how we can refuse to afford that Gentleman the countenance and support which a British subject is entitled to at the hands of his Government when engaged in a legitimate enterprise.’ But Salisbury declined to embody the latter argument in a dispatch. For an analogous attitude of the Slave Trade Department see Dike, K. O., Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta (Oxford, 1955).Google Scholar

30 Salisbury, no. 2 Slave Trade to Hay, 17 May 1879; Salisbury, no. 1 Slave Trade to Hay, 7 Feb. 1880, based on a suggestion by Wylde on Hay, no. 5 Commercial, 11 Jan. 1880.

31 In the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Sir Joseph was a director from 1890 to 1895, and Henry Lee was a director from 1879 to 1904 and President from 1889 to 1891. Both were prominent in the firm of Tootal, Broadhurst Lee and Co. Ltd (information kindly supplied by Mr Sidney Horrocks of Manchester Reference Library). The Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, 11 (1886), 145–64, has in an article on ‘The North-West Coast of Africa’ — an example both of Joseph Lee's views and of the methods used to enlist local support.

32 Minute, secret, 31 Jan. 1883, F.O. 99/261. (Dilke had been Parliamentary Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs under Granville before being succeeded by Fitzmaurice in October 1882, and on his promotion to the Cabinet questions concerning the North-West African Company continued to be referred to him.)

33 H. Lee to Dilke, 2 Sept. 1880.

34 Lister to H. Lee, 4 Feb. 1881: Granville to Hay, 2 Oct. 1880. (The originals do not appear to be in the F.O. archives, but copies are in a volume of Confidential Print on ‘Mr D. Mackenzie's Expedition to Cape Juby, 1878–81’ in the Granville Papers, P.R.O. 30/29/318.)

35 H. Lee to Dilke, 9 Aug. 1882, enclosing report from Mackenzie. (All references for the years 1881–4 are from F.O. 99/261 unless otherwise stated.)

36 H. Lee to Dilke, 8 July 1881, copy in P.R.O. 30/29/318.

37 Dupuis (Teneriffe), no. 14, 15 Oct. 1882; H. Lee to Fitzmaurice, 1 Feb. 1883; interview of H. Lee with Granville, 16 Feb. 1883; H. Lee to Granville, 22 Feb. 1883; H. Lee to Fitzmaurice (on which the ‘hint’ implied is noted), 31 May 1883; J. Lee to Fitzmaurice, 5 and 9 Oct. 1883 and 25 Apr. 1884.

38 Pauncefote, on letter from H. Lee of 20 Jan. 1883, ‘the Company's reply is full of mis-statements’: Hay, no. 20, 15 Mar. 1883, on ‘inaccuracies’ in the Company's letters.

39 Hay, Memos. of 16 Aug. 1879 and 12 Oct. 1882, and no. 26 Commercial, 28 June 1886, F.O. 99/262.

40 Minute, 13 Nov. 1884. Similarly, on 13 Nov. 1886, Pauncefote minuted, ‘They evidently want to entangle us…we must be most careful to avoid committing ourselves in any way’.

41 Fitzmaurice, minute, 1 Feb. 1883.

42 Pauncefote, minute, 3 Feb. 1883. At no time did Granville do more than endorse his subordinates’ suggestions on this question, and it was apparently never referred to Gladstone personally.

43 This initiative was taken by Lister, generally more favourable to the Company, in a letter to the Admiralty, 5 Feb. 1881, copy in P.R.O. 30/29/318.

44 Minute, secret, 31 Jan. 1883: ‘…it is notorious that Sir J. Drummond Hay…is more Moorish than the Moors in opinion and too ready to claim for them things they can't hold for themselves.’

45 H. and J. Lee to F.O., 12 Nov. 1884: Granville, no. 350 to Malet (Berlin), 15 Nov. 1884, embodying a recommendation by Fitzmaurice.

46 Sir Joseph Lee enjoyed a certain influence with the Foreign Office, having been the British delegate in Paris in 1881–2 to the Commission which conducted the negotiations relating to the renewal of the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860. (For this he was knighted in 1882.) Subsequently in 1883–4 he played a similar part in negotiations with Turkey, and also gave valuable service as a member of the Trade and Treaties Committee of the Board of Trade.

47 J. Lee to C. M. Kennedy, private, 1 Sept. 1885. (All references for 1885–7 are from F.O. 99/262 unless otherwise stated.) On 8 Oct. 1885 Kennedy strongly recommended to the Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade and Industry the grant of a Charter to the North-West African Company (British Parliamentary Papers, C-4621 (1886), paras. 209–10, 255, 302–3, 314).

48 Sir Percy Anderson, minute, 5 Sept. 1885. (In 1883 the Company had originally suggested that the whole coastline from the Wadi Draa to Portendik be taken over. This was no longer possible in 1885, as Spain had meanwhile declared a Protectorate over the area from Cape Bojador to Cape Blanco, a move to which Granville, after consulting the Admiralty, did not object. So in Sept. 1885 Lee had to restrict his claims to the sections of coast referred to here. The Spanish declaration of a Protectorate had been due to misplaced fear that Mackenzie's activities heralded an official British annexation (Bécker, J., Historia de las rela-ciones exteriores de España durante el siglo XIX (Madrid, 1926), II, 579–80), and Joseph Lee later complained, in a letter to Kennedy of 1 Sept. 1885, that the Spaniards had annexed ‘our River Ouro’ owing to the inaction of the British Government.)Google Scholar

49 Bourke, minutes, 3 and 11 Sept. 1885, ‘I should be very glad to help him as I consider his views reasonable and sound.’ (As Lee's latest communication came through the Commercial Department it was dealt with by Bourke, who supervised that Department, and was not seen by the more cautious Pauncefote, who would undoubtedly have borne in mind to a greater extent the political views of Sir J. Drummond Hay.)

50 Salisbury, minute, 11 Sept. 1885, endorsing Anderson's view that ‘it is a question for the Colonial Office who should decide whether they should take over the district’; Salisbury to C.O., 21 Sept. 1885.

51 Colonel Stanley to Salisbury, 6 Jan. 1886.

52 Admiralty to Salisbury, 2 Feb. 1886, based on a report by Captain Dawson of H.M.S. Sylvia.

53 Anderson, minute, 13 Jan. 1886, ‘If the Colonial Office attach importance to its position should they not harden their hearts to take it?’

54 Rosebery to N.W. African Company (hereafter referred to simply as ‘the Company’), 5 Mar. 1886: the isolated position of the coastline referred to ‘would make direct Imperial control an experiment attended with no ordinary risk and expenditure’.

55 The Admiralty never took kindly to these requests for ships, which were rarely within easy reach. In a letter of 24 June 1886 it pointed out that ‘if the lives of British subjects can only be protected by the presence of a ship-of-war, it would seem to be worthy of consideration whether it might not be more judicious to withdraw the persons alleged to be in danger’.

56 On 19 Sept. 1891 (F.O. 99/298) the Admiralty complained that a vessel had been diverted to Cape Juby only because of an ‘alarmist report’ from Sir Joseph Lee, a communication on which Salisbury minuted ‘Rub it in to the Company’.

57 Green, no. 4 Africa, 31 May 1888: Minutes by Lister, 14 and 25 May, and even Paunce-fote, 28 July 1888, ‘I fear we will get no redress unless we make some hostile demonstration’. Salisbury, however, declined to take any action other than diplomatic (F.O. 99/263).

58 E.g. Dilke to H. Lee, private, 9 Aug. 1882.

59 Salisbury, tg. no. 12 to Green, 8 Nov. 1888, F.O. 99/263: H. E. White (Chargé d'Affaires), no. 49, 4 Apr. 1889, F.O. 99/271.

60 Green, Priv. and Conf. to Pauncefote, 14 Dec. 1886, F.O. 99/248.

61 Green, no. 77, 8 Dec. 1886, F.O. 99/229, no. 78, 8 Dec. 1886 and private letter to E. Barrington (Salisbury's private secretary) 28 Oct. 1888, F.O. 99/263: ‘with Africa's expected early future we may learn to regret the surrender of Cape Juby as many do now the abandonment of Tangier.’

62 T. H. Sanderson (Assistant Under-Secretary), minute on letter from the Company of 20 May 1890, F.O. 99/298.

63 The German Representative at Tangier gives the following example of Green's alleged language: ‘Makenzie [sic] wuerde als Privatmann nicht Forts erbauen und dieselben mit Kanonen armieren lassen koennen und zu seinem Schutze wuerden nicht englische Kanonen-boote erscheinen; hinter Mackenzie stecke die englische Regierung, die diesen Punkt niemals aufgeben wuerde…’ (Tattenbach, no. A60, 29 June 1890, F.O. 553/172/U.C.I. Reel 209). Although in direct contradiction with the British Government's view, it is not inconsistent with Green's general attitude.

64 Green, nos. 3, 5 and 6, 12, 13 and 21 Feb. 1891, F.O. 99/298. The statement by A. J. P. Taylor, in his article on’ British Policy in Morocco, 1886–1902’ (E[nglish] H[istorical\ R[eview], LXVI (July 1951), 349), that Green went to see the Sultan ‘to attempt to carry the Commercial Treaty’ that he was advocating, ignores the evidence in the F.O. 99 series on the North-West African Company; e.g. in Green, no. 83, 10 Oct. 1890, F.O. 99/298, ‘I am now only awaiting the sultan's entry into winter quarters… to complete my preparations for proceeding to the … Court, chiefly with the object of obtaining from Mulai Hassan the settlement of the Cape Juby claims’.

65 H. Hervey (Western Department), minute, 28 Nov. 1888, F.O. 99/263.

66 Salisbury, minute on proposed draft to Green, 4 Jan. 1889, embodied in Salisbury no. 4 to Green of the same date, F.O. 99/271.

67 Pauncefote, minute on Company's letter of 31 May, 1883; Dilke, minute of 2 June, 1883.

68 Green, tg. no. 25, 30 Sept. 1889, and Salisbury's minute thereon; F.O. to Company, Pressing and Confidential, by special messenger, 4 Oct. 1889; Green, tg. no. 28, 9 Oct. 1889; Sanderson, minute, undated but apparently recording an interview with Sir Joseph Lee of 6 Oct. 1889; Sanderson, minute, 7 Oct. 1889; Sanderson, tg. to Salisbury (at Nice) and Salisbury, tg. to Sanderson, 7 Oct. 1889; J. Lee to Sanderson, private, 6 Oct. and Company to F.O., 16 Oct. 1889. F.O. 99/271.

69 Without entering into all the detail of the various suggestions emanating from the Company and from Kirby Green and his successor Sir Charles Euan-Smith, it must be stressed that the legal situation was very complex. If Cape Juby were recognized as Moorish, as Mulai Hassan insisted, then it was either not a treaty port and not open to trade, or, if made a treaty port, was open to all nations and subject to payment of the normal import and export duties. If Cape Juby were not Moorish, as the Company insisted, it was still not possible to exclude non-British traders as long as the British Government refused to give official recognition, and difficult to hold the Sultan responsible for interruption of trade or expect him— as the Company did—to use his religious influence to facilitate commerce at Cape Juby.

70 Salisbury, minute on Company's letter of 28 July 1887: another letter pf 12 July 1887 had evoked his denial of ‘this absurd liability which they attempt to fasten on us’.

71 Sanderson, minute, 23 Sept. 1890, F.O. 99/298. The ‘territorial claims’ referred to here are not those based on Mackenzie's treaty of 1879, but much more extensive ones claiming the exclusive right to trade from the Wadi Draa to Cape Bojador arising from certain nebulous agreements of 1889 with another local chieftain.

72 Sir West Ridgway, Report on Morocco, encl. in no. 109 Secret, 10 July 1893, F.O. 99/314. A. J. P. Taylor, E.H.R. LXVI, 360, in discussing the reason for the decline of British influence in Morocco, makes no mention of the North-West African Company's venture to which various representatives and officials attributed such unfortunate results.

73 Montfraix, no. 5, 12 Aug. 1883, A.A.E. Maroc, vol. 47.

74 Féraud, no. 5 Conf., 14 Jan. 1888, A.A.E. Maroc, vol. 55.

75 Aubigny, no. 69, 15 May 1892, A.A.E. Maroc, vol. 64. Another observer came to the brilliant conclusion that the continued presence of the Company at its post, despite an almost complete absence of trade, must be due to the fact that ‘the British Government…allows it annually certain subsidies in order to enable it to remain’: Souhart, no. 28, 16 Feb. 1892, A.A.E. Maroc, vol. 63.

76 Salisbury, minute on Euan-Smith, no. 99, 24 May 1892, F.O. 99/287: ‘…it would give rise to much misconception.’

77 International problems arising from the interest of various Great Powers in Morocco are dealt with more fully in my unpublished London Ph.D. thesis, ‘The “Morocco Question”, 1880–92.’

78 Salisbury, minutes on Euan-Smith, no. 97, 24 May 1892, F.O. 99/310. Figuig is on the Algerian-Morocco border: the region to which Spain had a treaty claim was ‘Mar Pequena’ on the Atlantic coast, a place over which there were endless disputes as to its exact location until the Ifni enclave was ceded in 1912.

79 Green, tg. no. 3, 21 Feb. 1891, F.O. 99/298.

80 Currie, minute on Green, tg. no. 3, 21 Feb. 1891, F.O. 99/298.

81 Salisbury, minute on Green, tg. no. 3, 21 Feb. 1891, F.O. 99/298.

82 Salisbury, minute on Memos. by Sir E. Hertslet (F.O. Librarian) on the Right of any Foreign Power to annex the North-West coast of Africa between Wadi Draa arid Cape Bojador, of 5 Mar. and 24 April 1891, F.O. 99/298.

83 J. Lee to Currie, private, 1 Mar. 1891, F.O. 99/298: ‘As you know I have borne this burden for some time, and I now feel much relieved, as the drain upon my resources was to say the least giving me anxiety.’ (Sir Joseph was deputy-chairman of the Manchester Ship Canal Company, 1886–93, and seems to have had financial difficulties in connexion with the raising of capital for it.)

84 Cf. Morocco no. 1 (C-6815) and no. 2 (C-6821) with original documents in volumes 298, 310, 279, 285, 286 and 287 of the F.O. 99 series.

85 Company to Salisbury, 31 Mar. 1892 and reply of 6 Apr.: Company to Rosebery, 20 July 1893 and reply of 14 Aug. F.O. 99/310. ‘Benevolent patronage without responsibility’ was the most that the Foreign Office would admit even privately (Sanderson, Permanent Undersecretary, minute on Satow, tg. no. 29, 16 May 1894, F.O. 99/390).

86 Satow, no. 129, 29 Nov. 1894 and tg. no. 12, 4 Mar. 1895, F.O. 99/390. (Kimberley to Satow, private, 25 Dec. 1894, P.R.O. 30/33/3/4, makes it clear that the F.O. had not intended to raise the question.)

87 Sanderson, minute on Satow, tg. no. 13, 13 Mar. 1895, F.O. 99/390, ‘This is really splendid’.

88 Sanderson to Company, tg. 27 Feb. 1895; Rosebery, tg. no. 5 to Satow, 28 Feb. 1895; Rosebery, tg. no. 2 to Satow, 9 Jan. 1895, ‘They are clearly in straits for money to go on with.’ F.O. 99/390.

89 The original document is in F.O. 99/390 and is printed in Hertslet, E., Map of Africa by Treaty, 3rd edn., III, 970–2.Google Scholar

90 Mackenzie himself, although at one stage nominally made a Director, seems to have gradually become of less importance. In 1895 he was on his way to Zanzibar as a Special Commissioner for the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and only heard of the sale of Cape Juby in the press: ‘I shall…always look back with regret’, he later wrote (Khalifate of the West, 204) ‘on having had to give back to barbarism a place which seemed to me to stand out as a beacon of civilisation in a part of Africa which had been so long neglected.’

91 Whereas on 17 Jan. 1878 Mackenzie had notified the Foreign Office of his intention to found a ‘Commercial and Missionary Station’, by 1886 the claim was being made that’…we interfere in no way with religious susceptibilities’: Company to F.O., 31 Aug. 1886.

92 By the time Joseph Chamberlain came on the scene it was too late for a Colonial Secretary to give support. When the question of commercial activities in the same area was again brought up, he had to admit (to R. B. Cunninghame Graham, M.P., 10 Mar. 1899, F.O. 99/391) that ‘I take a great interest in all that bears on the development of Africa, but there is no doubt whatever that this particular question is a matter entirely for the Foreign Office…’.

93 Wild, H. W.(an ex-Foreign Office official), in Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, IV (1888), 161.Google Scholar