ABSTRACT
A useful theoretical background for this study of mining tycoons in British West Africa during the age of high imperialism derives from the hypothesis of P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins on the role of the so-called “gentlemanly capitalists” of late Victorian and Edwardian England and their connections with overseas expansion. According to Cain and Hopkins the main driving force behind British informal and formal imperialism in overseas territories stemmed, not from the captains of heavy industry, nor from a bloc of British international export/import merchants, but from a complex set of economic and social networks of wealthy men centered in the financial and service sectors of London, and landed wealth in the outer provinces. Cain and Hopkins diverged from previous theories on the role of capital in imperial history-such as the J.A. Hobson hypothesis-with a focus on overseas investment of “surplus capital” which accumulated in the hands of three main allied interest groups: (1) investment bankers and financiers; (2) some of the great families of the landed aristocracy and gentry (who were frequently tied by education, marriage, and club membership to the financiers); and (3) assorted businessmen in the City’s “service sector”—made up of shipping company executives, insurance agents, stock jobbers, real estate magnates and managers, bullion brokers, dealers in Treasury bills, and commodities brokers-most of whom had business addresses and residences in London and the surrounding counties.1 To this list I would add the directors, major investors, and the organizers of mining companies and railway construction.
