The opening of the palm oil trade from 1852, followed by the subsequent contraction of the British oil market, had by the 1880s culminated in major problems for all those involved in the palm products trade. This had important implications for Anglo-West African relations. This is no place to examine either British imperial policy or proconsular practice in West Africa, but it is important to look at the way the restructuring of the trade in the second half of the century led to changes in the relationship between British palm product traders and their African suppliers, and particularly to changes in the attitudes of British traders towards political intervention on the west coast. By the 1880s earlier attitudes that had been largely indifferent to ideas of political expansion had begun to change among Liverpool firms, moving towards support for political intervention in those areas – particularly the Niger Delta – that lay at the heart of the palm products trade. Some traders at least had by the 1880s come to see political intervention as a solution to the economic problems facing the trade. This was to have major long-term implications for the future of the coastal palm products brokers.

This change in attitudes was in fact a long time coming. In the period up to c. 1880 British palm products traders – and particularly the established Liverpool firms like Harrisons, Horsfalls, and Hatton & Cookson – had remained largely neutral to notions of British political annexations in West Africa or of removing the brokers of the coast. Those who supported territorial expansion or contemplated moves inland were either newcomers to the trade who wished to undermine the position of the established firms, or Krio traders who saw British influence, …