D. K. Fieldhouse

The United Africa Company (UAC), formed in 1929 by the fusion of the Niger Company and the African and Eastern Corporation, was by far the largest single commercial organization in West and Equatorial Africa, and thus central to modern African economic history. This is the first detailed account to be published and one which fills a serious gap in the literature. It was not commissioned by the company (now reabsorbed into Unilever), but the author had full access to all confidential material in the UAC and Unilever archives and complete freedom in what he wrote. The book is not intended to be primarily a company history but uses the UAC as a focal point for detailed study of how the role of foreign merchant capital changed in response to economic and political developments in Black Africa during this critical half century.

"For many years David Fieldhouse has been widely acclaimed as the leading economic historian of the modern British empire, and until his retirement in 1992 was Vere Harmsworth Professor in the University of Cambridge. The thirteen contributors to this collection of essays in his honour comprise an impressive array of students, colleagues, and friends. Their diverse subjects range widely across the economic and administrative fields of British Imperial history in the past two centuries, globally embracing Africa and Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific."--BOOK JACKET.