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British Rubber Companies in East Africa Before the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. Forbes Munro
J. Forbes Munro
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

Until the Second World War, at least, tropical Africa constituted harsh and difficult terrain for Western capitalism — a region where financial loss, erosion of the capital base and ignominious failure were as likely for the expatriate or metropolitan firm as profitability or growth of turnover. This simple fact has been obscured in recent years both by the practice of business history which, in Africa as elsewhere, tends to concentrate upon the relative handful of enterprises which prospered and survived, and by dependency/underdevelopment theory which stresses Western capital's penetration into, and its re-ordering of, non-capitalist societies. That many European firms failed to make an effective entry, however, deserves to be reiterated, and the reasons for lack of success need closer investigation if acceptable conclusions are to be drawn about the character and consequences of European business activity in Africa. Such are the aims of the present article, which evaluates the brief history of twenty-two British companies set up to engage in rubber production in East Africa shortly before the First World War. It seeks to answer two questions — how is their presence to be explained and, more importantly, what factors frustrated their ambitions ? — and hopes to illustrate comparative international aspects of British corporate activity and investment. The failure of British rubber-planting initiatives in East Africa, it will be argued, was the obverse, and indeed a direct consequence, of successful British rubbercultivation in South and South-East Asia.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1983 , pp. 369 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 An earlier version of this article was presented to the Colloque ‘Entreprises et Entrepreneurs en Afrique aux 19e et 20e Siècles’, University of Paris VII, 12 1981.Google Scholar

2 Munro, J. F., ‘Monopolists and speculators: British investment in West African Rubber, 1904–14’, J. Afr. Hist. XXII, 2 (1981), 263–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 The lower figure is supplied by Tetzlaff, (Koloniale Entwicklung, 126)Google Scholar and the higher by The India-Rubber Journal, xlviii (1914), 500.Google Scholar The discrepancy can probably be explained by the fact that many of the British companies acquired additional estates after commencing operations in Tanganyika.

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12 Statutory meeting of the Muhesa Rubber Plantations, 9 June 1910, The Times, 10 June 1910.

13 PRO: Report by Vice-Consul King, Dar-es-Salaam, on the Rubber Crisis, 26 February 1914, F.O. 368/988/14526.

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17 Prospectus of the Muhesa Rubber Plantations, Issues, 28 02 1910, p. 141.Google Scholar

18 I am indebted to Dr John Drabble for this suggestion.

19 PRO: Wilson to Lansdowne, 28 March 1905, C.O. 536/1/13852; Sadler to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 6 June 1905, 4 July 1905 and 20 October 1905, C.O. 536/2/22517, 26747 and 412231; Bell to Elgin, 30 October 1906, C.O. 536/7/4478.

20 PRO: Boyle to Crewe, 10 January 1910, C.O. 536/32/7624; Boyle to Crewe, 22 February 1910, C.O. 536/32/8211 and 8214; Tomkins to Crewe, 8 August 1910, C.O. 536/333/27990. See also Brown, E. and Hunter, H. H., Planting in Uganda (London, 1913).Google Scholar

21 The India-Rubber Journal, xlvii (1914), 77.Google Scholar

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23 Lewis, W. A., Growth and Fluctuations, 1870–1913 (London, 1978), 188.Google Scholar