Dutch Entrepreneurship in the Era of the Concession Companies (1899–1921)

This chapter tracks the fate of the Dutch entrepreneurs in the first two decades of the twentieth century, a decade characterised by the widespread adoption of the concession company system across imperial Africa. The concession system, whereby private companies paid a fixed sum to the imperial state to receive the monopoly over production and trade in large areas including jurisdictional and military powers, was pioneered by Leopold II in the Congo Free State after 1892 and soon adopted across the continent, including in the French Congo and Angola. The chapter analyses how the NAHV failed to obtain concessions in Angola, managed to obtain two in the French Congo and still did business in the Congo Free State despite the challenging circumstances there. It also tracks the further decline of the Oost-Afrikaansche Compagnie or OAC, previously Muller & Co, in Liberia, in the early twentieth century. The chapter shows how the Dutch entrepreneurs regained their footing in Africa through the concession system in the early twentieth-century French Congo after their pivot away from the Congo Free State in 1892–1893. Finally, the chapter tracks the transition of part of the French concessions to German imperial control in 1911-1912, showing the associated challenges with this change in sovereignty.