Trade Winds on the Niger: Saga of the Royal Niger Company, 1830-1971

This tale starts in 1830 on the West Coast of Africa during the latter days of the slave trade when palm oil ruffians began trading in the swamps of the Niger delta, bartering their coloured beads and cases of gin for the golden oil and ivory which, if they did not die first from black water fever, malaria or dysentery, would make them rich. This book is about their struggles in the area now known as Nigeria that led to the formation of the Royal Niger Company Chartered and Limited with its private army in 1886, the takeover of the Company by Lever Brothers Ltd in 1920 and its amalgamation in 1929 with its rival, the African and Eastern Trade Co-operation to form the United Africa Company, which then became the largest trading organization of its type in West Africa, if not in the world. Obviously, the old trading methods of Nigeria had to give way eventually, not only to more modern techniques, but also to the pressures of national independence, and so the book is finished by recording the affairs of the latter day agents and managers as they diversified the Company’s activities and restructured its establishment until by 1971, when the book ends, it had been able to sell off its large river fleet, which had been for so long the backbone of its enterprise in Nigeria, but was now redundant, and yet still remain the leading commercial conglomerate in both Nigeria and West Africa.