Abstract:
These documents were extracted from the Records of the African Companies in London by Miss Ruth A. Fisher. They are from the papers of the Treasury and the Colonial Office. They appear here in the form of extracts which are in no sense intended as exhaustive of any particular phase of history, but as showing the value of an almost unexploited store of information bearing on a most important aspect of the commercial expansion of Europe. It is believed, too, that these extracts herein presented will stimulate interest and attract attention to the historical and anthropological aspects of this conquest of Africa. These extracts from the Records of the African Companies have several claims to value. They show the method of approach in opening the African trade, the effort to monopolize it, the international contest for control of the traffic, the manner in which the natives were brought into it, and the institutions of the natives thus reached. The special reason for the publication of these documents is the light which they throw on the natives themselves. Valuable as these Records of the African Companies may seem, however, they have not been extensively used by investigators as has been the case with the records of other trading companies of the British Empire like that of the East India. This neglect, as Mr. Hilary Jenkinson has pointed out, may be due to the dissimilarity in fortune. The natives of Africa differed more widely from those of Europe than did those of India, and the trade of India was more profitable than that of Africa
