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.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Thomson (explorer)
Famous quotes containing the words british, south, africa and/or company:
“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“The white gulls south of Victoria
catch tossed crumbs in midair.
When anyone hears the Catbird
he gets lonesome.”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
““I’ll love you dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“It has lately been drawn to your correspondent’s attention that, at social gatherings, she is not the human magnet she would be. Indeed, it turns out that as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice- skate. It would appear, from the actions of the assembled guests, that she is about as hot company as a night nurse.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)