ENGLAND AND FRANCE 355 In 1886 the political sanction, of which the need had made itself more urgently felt with every extension of competing foreign influence towards the interior, was accorded by the grant of a Royal Charter. By the charter the Company acquired, under the new name of the Royal Niger Company, the international position of a recognised government, whose treaties with native chiefs were protected by Great Britain, and from this date the flag of the Company became for international purposes the equivalent of the British flag. Where it flew, the authority of Great Britain was held to be established, and where the company negotiated a treaty of protection with a native power, such treaties were held to exclude any political treaties from being made in the territories of the same potentate by other European nations. The charter also conferred upon the Company the power to levy taxes to a limited extent for the purpose of meeting the expenses entailed upon it by its political expenditure. Chief among the items of this expenditure was the raising of a small native military force.