British North West Africa Company was an international trading company, founded by Donald McKenzie in 1874 after securing bank financing with the guarantee of businessmen from

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. Since 1882 It was taken from Port Victoria in

Tarfaya Tarfaya ( ar, طرفاية - ''Ṭarfāya''; ber, ⵟⵔⴼⴰⵢⴰ) is a coastal Moroccan town, located at the level of Cape Juby, in western Morocco, on the Atlantic coast. It is located about 890 km southwest of the capital Rabat, and ...

as its headquarters for the purpose of dealing with commercial caravans linking Noun River and

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; french: Tombouctou; Koyra Chiini: ); tmh, label=Tuareg, script=Tfng, ⵜⵏⴱⴾⵜ, Tin Buqt a city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrativ ...

Expeditions

In 1879, the company occupied and took over

as part of the

Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, or Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonisation of Africa, colonization of most of Africa by seven Western Europe, Western European powers during a ...

, and turned it into an exchange center of trade in order to trade with commercial caravans coming from

and destined to Wadi Noun. In 1882,

Mackenzie Mackenzie, Mckenzie, MacKenzie, or McKenzie may refer to: People * Mackenzie (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Mackenzie (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * Clan Mackenzie, a S ...

built a fortress under the name of " Port Victoria". On 26 March 1888, the local Saharan tribes attacked the fortress which resulted in killing and injuring workers. In 1895, after the Treaty of Cape Juby, the company abandoned its final fort and left it to the sultan of Morocco, Abd al-Aziz, who had just succeeded his father

Hassan I ''Mawlay'' Hassan bin Mohammed ( ar, الحسن بن محمد, translit=al-Ḥassan bin Muḥammad), known as Hassan I ( ar, الحسن الأول, translit=al-Ḥassan al-Awwal), born in 1836 in Fes and died on 9 June 1894 in Tadla, was a sulta ...

References

{{reflist Companies of Africa British companies established in 1874