Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company

This open access book tells a new and untold history of the architecture of West Africa in the colonial era, as revealed for the first time through the archives of the United Africa Company (UAC). From the imperial Royal Niger Company’s charter in the 1890s through to its suave African department stores of the 1960s, the UAC - a British company firmly embedded in the economies of colonialism, extraction, and exploitation - became the largest commercial firm in West Africa, involved in almost every commercial enterprise and sector, and responsible for procuring architecture, infrastructure, and city real-estate across a vast region. Based on unprecedented access to the UAC archives, this book pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the high colonial period through to independence. It reproduces an extraordinary array of newly-uncovered material - from photographs of streetscapes, buildings, and West African everyday life to civic reports and city plans - and pres