Joseph Thomson (explorer) - British South Africa Company

British South Africa Company

In 1890, Cecil Rhodes employed Thomson to explore north of the Zambezi and gain treaties and mining concessions from chiefs on behalf of his British South Africa Company which had been chartered by the British Government to claim the territory known as Zambezia (later Rhodesia, modern day Zimbabwe and Zambia) as far north as the African Great Lakes. Though he made a sequence of important treaties on the trip, he was blocked by a smallpox epidemic in the intervening country from reaching the ultimate goal, which was to meet Alfred Sharpe at the court of Msiri, King of Katanga, and to assist Sharpe in incorporating the mineral-rich country by treaty into Zambezia. Thomson's role was to bring supplies of cloth, gunpowder, and other gifts with which to impress Msiri. Without them, Sharpe was rebuffed, and a year later the Stairs Expedition led by Captain William Stairs, believing itself to be in race with another attempt by Thomson to reach Katanga, killed Msiri and took Katanga for King Leopold II of Belgium. Unknown to the Stairs Expedition, by this time Thomson had been instructed by the British government not to go.