Some aspects of colonial office relations with the Chartered Company

Abstract

The thesis and papers of R. Palmer, J. Taylor and P. Stigger convey the impression that the Colonial Office and the Chartered Company were somehow antagonistic to each other, that Directors were constantly either challenging or circumventing the Colonial Office. They seem also to accept without question that the Colonial Office was an altruistic institution cast in the role of . defender and champion of native interests and thwarted only by the Company's machinations. This paper attempts to show, from information gathered as a sideline to other research, that far from opposing the Company the Colonial Office agreed in principle with the Company and as far as they could promoted ,, the Company's interests. The grant of a charter to combined London and Cape financial concerns was not an aberration but a deliberate act of policy, and it is unreasonable to assume that having granted it, the government would henceforth deliberately oppose the enterprise of those who had been thus favored. The only consideration that inhibited the full co-operation of the Colonial Office was public opinion as expressed at Westminster.