CHAPTER XXXVIII THE ROYAL NIGER COMPANY Thus from 1886 the Royal Niger Company took the position, familiar in the annals of British history, of a commercial body endowed with political powers, extending over a territory of which the limits were undefined, and in which the character, the numbers, and the history of the native populations were unknown. England, in general, knew as little of Nigeria and its possibilities at the end of the nineteenth century as it knew of India in the sixteenth century. The territories over which these powers were granted were at first known by the name of the ''Territories of the Royal Niger Company." A little later this title was changed for the more convenient name of Nigeria.

Sir George Goldie, acting first as Vice-President and afterwards as President of the Chartered Company, continued to direct a policy, in which the legitimate and commercial interests of the Company in the lower reaches of the river were safeguarded and developed by a system of political missions, extending inland for 500 miles, to the Emirates of Sokoto and Gando in the north, to Yola and Adamawa in the east, and finally to Borgu, lying in the back country of Lagos, in the west. As a result of these political missions, treaties were negotiated, and in many instances subsidies were given to native chiefs. The disturbed condition of the territories and the hostile attitude of native chiefs, combined with the difficulties of penetrating to the interior, through unknown tropical country, laid waste in many districts by centuries of slave-raiding and inter-tribal war, rendered 356