Most of these private traders were active in the transatlantic slave trade. Among other works, Margaret Priestley’s history on the elite coastal trading family, the Brews, provides details about the formation of these early West African merchant societies. For the purposes of this study it is important to note that foreign merchants, like Irish slave trader Richard Brew, often lived on the coast for extended periods of time and were subject to intense bargaining with wealthy African merchants and middlemen who owned businesses as large as some of the European companies. Some of these foreign merchants also married African women according to local custom; the range of benefits gained from such unions were pivotal to European men’s commercial success prior to the second half of the nineteenth century.7 For the most part, however, the European trading community was restricted and small; this allowed the African elite merchant class, also known as “merchant princes,” to hold strong bargaining positions and to play European rivals against one another.8
The abolition and suppression of the transatlantic slave trade at the turn of the nineteenth century began to reshape the terms of business between European and African merchants. Referred to by historians as a shift to “legitimate” commerce (in order to distinguish it from the illegal trade in slaves), this era saw the replacement of the trade in human beings with the trade in raw materials such as palm oil, groundnuts, rubber, timber, and minerals.9 Propelled in part by the spread of industrial capitalism and the need to supply new factories in Europe, the import-export trade among British, French, German, Swiss, and occasionally US firms in West Africa grew increasingly competitive.10 The circulation of standardized currencies, the absence of tariff barriers, and the mass production of consumables further contributed to this surge. The pace of trade also sped up with the invention of the steamship. As A. G. Hopkins points out, “in the middle of the century sailing ships took about thirty-five days to reach West Africa, but by 1900 the steamer had reduced this time by half.”11
Such developments made it easier for both African and European newcomers to enter the commercial scene. As a result, a number of small private firms popped up along the coast. In contrast to the merchants before them, these people had little to no previous connection to West Africa. The Manchester firms John Walkden and Pickering & Berthound, as well as the Liverpool brothers who formed John Holt & Company, were some key examples (fig. 1.1). Likewise, shifting trading conditions introduced a new group of African businessmen. Distinct from wealthy African merchant princes who dictated the terms of overseas trade and agreements with foreigners, this new group mainly consisted of people who acted “either as independent wholesalers and retailers, or as agents selling goods on commission for manufacturing firms in Europe.”12 This was a transition from previous decades in which African merchants operated mostly independent businesses outside the purview of European firms and supervisors.
FIGURE 1.1. Exterior of provision store, Sekondi, ca. 1910. Reproduced with kind permission of Unilever from the original at the Unilever Archives, UAC/1/11/9/12/31.
Thus, when British colonial officials arrived and officially claimed Accra as the capital of their crown colony in 1874, they carried forward an economic process that was already under way. In 1902 the creation of the Gold Coast colony was completed when the British annexed Asante and the Northern Territories and brought both regions under their jurisdiction. Most foreign firms continued to conduct business as usual with little interference from the colonial state. Major changes to the commercial landscape were the size, structure, and geographical location of firms’ operations; companies that had been situated on the coast for decades started to establish wholesale and retail stores inland. According to historian Kwame Arhin, in 1897 “trade in goods of European manufacture was microscopic” within northern Asante and the Northern Territories, but this trade expanded significantly after colonialism. Within “five years of the establishment of colonial rule,” demand soared for items including silk handkerchiefs, cheap cloth, assorted perfumes, combs, knives, tin spoons, hairpins, buttons, pomade, and mirrors.13 The imposition of colonial caravan tolls in 1898 to control trans-Saharan commerce and a general policing of trade routes in the two regions also contributed to this shift. We know that in the precolonial era trade with other West African countries had been particularly important. What was left of these networks with the imposition of colonialism was mainly trade with other British West African colonies.14
The expansion of firms into the interior was further aided by improvements in transportation and communication networks. To facilitate the extraction and export of raw materials such as cocoa, gold, and rubber, the Colonial Office began improving transportation, mostly through railway construction. Completed by 1902, new railway routes from Sekondi to Tarkwa to Kumasi were equipped with a telegraph system, a technology that improved internal communication within firms.15 The increasing number of all-weather roads was, however, the result of African rather than British achievement. These road networks made it easier for merchants to travel hundreds of miles from the coast to sell all types of goods, and to sell them more cheaply, to towns deep in the interior.16 (Before this time, porters balanced goods on their heads and carried them for several miles on foot—a journey that often took several days.) The new mobility shortened distances between population centers, areas of production, and ports. Imports of motor vehicles for commercial use, mostly Ford cars and light American trucks, rose from twenty-one in 1912 to 133 by 1913.17 New roads and railways determined the location and construction of new stores. Firms’ employees, as well as African chiefs, often cited “good roads” in appeals to firms for opening stores in their towns.18
New thinking in Britain about colonial markets also refocused manufacturers’ and exporters’ attention on Africa. British imperialists had long dreamed of their colonies as a vital market for British goods. Men like Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Chamberlin invoked the image of “new markets” abroad to “woo support for their imperial ambitions” among the British working class. Access to new markets, they assured the voting public, “would secure the future of British capitalism and thus British jobs.”19 Yet, it was not until after World War I that imperialist fantasies would begin to materialize. As historian Richard Rathbone argues, Africa before 1914 “was for the most part a dream for the greedy speculator.”20 The devastation of the war and the economic stagnation that followed it introduced a new sense of urgency; imperial markets became essential to Britain’s recovery. This sentiment was echoed in British commercial publications, reinforced at public events like the British Empire Exhibition of 1924–25, and bolstered by individual businessmen who claimed that the African market was “one of the world’s hopes for the future.”21 Strengthening economic links between Britain and its colonial possessions became central to parliamentary discussions and was reflected in a series of tariff reforms throughout the interwar period. These initiatives allowed exports from the colonies free entry into Britain, whereas those outside the empire had to pay duties and set limits on the amount of goods imported into British West Africa from other countries. The rhetoric of imperial preference further increased awareness of the colonies as economically vital to the metropole. In 1926 the colonial secretary established the Empire Marketing Board as a means of promoting intra-empire trade and, through public marketing campaigns, convincing British consumers to buy commodities from the colonies.22 Interwar development efforts initiated by the Colonial Office further encouraged financial links between Britain and its imperial possessions. The Colonial Development Act of 1929, for instance, incentivized British capital investment throughout the empire.23
It is from this interwar context that large foreign firms—which are central to the present study’s analysis—would emerge. In contrast to state-chartered companies and private firms, formed by one man or a partnership, twentieth-century firms were large limited liability companies established through the taking over of other firms. Among economic historians the years between 1880 and 1930 are known as the era of acquisitions. As smaller firms were swept up through mergers and takeovers,
