Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Matthew Wells
Guests: Euan Harrison & Rick Booxtra (co-authors; Iain Jackson is also a co-author)
Episode Title: Iain Jackson et. al., "Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Date: January 28, 2026

This episode dives into the new book "Architecture, Empire and The United Africa Company," which reconceives the architectural and urban history of West Africa through the lens of a colossal British trading conglomerate—the United Africa Company (UAC). The discussion focuses on how the UAC’s business imperatives, rather than the colonial state, fundamentally shaped the built environment in West Africa from the 1890s through the 1960s.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Genesis of the Project & Authors' Motivations

• The project emerged from a large grant to Iain Jackson to research the UAC as a case study for understanding West African architecture through commerce, not just state intervention.

  • "We were interested in telling the story of West African architecture and urban development, not through what the British government had built...but rather how the colonial drive for raw materials like palm oil, timber, cocoa, minerals really shaped the West African built environment." — Rick Booxtra [03:33]

• The research team included Iain Jackson, Euan Harrison, Rick Booxtra, Michele Tenzon, and Claire Tunstall (head of archives at Unilever).

2. The UAC as an Actor in Architectural History

• UAC was a business empire more powerful than the colonial state at times, building hundreds of trading posts, warehouses, and even company towns.

  • Architecture was often a byproduct, not a central objective—making the archival study challenging.
  • Few buildings have known architects; most were utilitarian and driven by logistical and commercial needs.

• Introduction of "gray architecture" (Alex Bremner’s concept):

  • Focus on humble warehouses, offices, and infrastructure rather than monumental colonial buildings.
    "Rather than thinking about these grand public buildings...the majority of the colonial built environment really is made up of warehouses, offices...not grand designs, but really formed a key part of this network of imperial trade." — Rick Booxtra [07:38]

3. Navigating a Non-Architectural, Corporate Archive

• The UAC archive was vast, complex, and more business-oriented than architectural.

• The research team used "informed speculation" and collaborative sampling, forgoing established business history methods for a more creative, lateral dive across files.

  "Instead of this kind of solitary endeavor of being looking at a single archival file, you were experiencing this archive as a whole, as part of a team." — Euan Harrison [09:54]

4. Book Structure and Unique Methodologies

• Tripartite Structure:

  1. The Archive (foundational context)
  2. Rivers & Waterways (early trading posts)
  3. Land & Extraction (resource exploitation, e.g., in Congo, Nigeria, Ghana)
  4. Cities (urban development, real estate, department stores, independence era)

• Image Collections: Each section includes previously unpublished visual material from the archive.

• Responder Essays: Short essays by visiting African architects/scholars, bringing alternate and critical perspectives.

  "We invited several architects and scholars, mainly from West and Central Africa, to...engage with the archive, and then come up with shorter essays...in which they provide a different idea...and critically respond to what we see and what we read in the archive." — Rick Booxtra [12:40]

5. Key Places and Histories

• Port Sunlight: Model company town by Lever Brothers in the UK, under-explored link to West Africa.
  • "Port Sunlight is a famous company town...built by Lever Brothers...It's a place that has its own historiography as contributing to the Garden City movement. Lord Lever begins building Port Sunlight...at the same moment as he begins buying up these palm oil trading firms in West Africa. And this was the aspect of the Port Sunlight story that we felt had never really been told." — Euan Harrison [17:23]

6. UAC’s West African Expansion

• Early Trading Stations: Rudimentary, fortified, often prefabricated, using imported materials; driven by security and expedience.

  • "They're often made of imported materials brought over from Britain. Often they have a fortified element to them." — Rick Booxtra [19:43]

• Transition to Company Towns and Harbors: As monopolies secured, infrastructure and scale grew notably (e.g. Barutu harbor).

  • "By the kind of 1910s, when the lever owned businesses are the largest in the region, they begin investing in quite substantial pieces of company owned infrastructure. Company towns, an entire harbor complex at a place called Barutu" — Euan Harrison [21:35]

7. Resource Extraction, Trade, and Empire

• Main Commodities: Palm oil (for soap and margarine), cocoa, minerals, tropical timber (especially profitable).
  • "One of the most profitable things that they extracted was tropical timber...the African Timber Company, which is a UAC subsidiary, sort of eventually buys out all these other traders and really builds company towns and starts quite successfully extracting timber over enormous amounts of land concessions..." — Rick Booxtra [23:10]
• UAC’s operations were shaped by, and shaped, colonial legislative frameworks, even as they sometimes clashed with colonial authorities.

8. Material Histories: From Africa to Britain

• Empire-produced timber from West Africa was promoted and utilized in British public architecture; policy changes rebranded these as "world woods" as independence neared.
  • "What we see is that the UAC's business there really aligns with British government policy...So when you check these things, we found, for example, that empire timber, including timber that we could trace back to the UAC's operation in West Africa, was used for post offices in London in the 1930s." — Rick Booxtra [26:45]

9. African Cities, Independence, and Architectural Modernity

• UAC in Developmental Modernity: Presented itself as a partner in modernization, constructing office blocks and using them as symbols of national progress.
  • "The UAC becomes very adept at framing itself as an agent of a kind of broader kind of developmental modernity, particularly in African cities..." — Euan Harrison [29:28]
• Advertising & Representational Strategies: UAC framed its buildings as gifts to independent nations, deploying press campaigns and advertisements.
  • "They would run these very extensive press campaigns showing images of their own office blocks under headings like Find buildings in richer country or A gift to Ghana from the uac..." — Euan Harrison [31:16]

10. Consumerism, Department Stores, and Elite Consumption

• Kingsway Stores: UAC's luxury department store chain pivoted from serving expatriates to a local African elite in the postcolonial era—conspicuous consumption as modern identity.
  • "Through things like fashion shows and ideal home shows, exhibitions, this kind of thing, an African elite customer base is introduced, quote unquote, to new forms of consumption." — Euan Harrison [32:15]
• Architecture as Symbol of Progress: New-store features like elevators and self-checkout reflected modern aspirations.

11. Images and Visual Material as Historical Intervention

• Over 400 previously unpublished images feature in the book, often revealing shifts in corporate thinking and archiving.

  • "One of the images that I've always really found fascinating and revealing in the archive is a photograph of. A dwelling in West Africa, which is mud. And the descriptions next to it are quite revealing. So when the photograph was initially taken by one of the UAC's photographers, it says, this is a mud hut. But then at some point, this is crossed out and it is replaced by, I think it's an African dwelling. So you see that the way the uac, the company, thinks about West Africa as changing, and you see that reflected in the archive itself." — Rick Booxtra [34:49]

• Advertising images from late colonial Lagos reframed postcolonial aspirations, showing modernist interiors and affluent African life as an aspirational ideal.

  • "...there is one that advertises Kingsway stores in Lagos, which shows this very elegant cocktail party with modernist furniture and beautifully patterned fabrics...the kind of subtle message behind this advertising image seemed to be that if we want postcolonial Africa to work, we should work with the UAC and not against it." — Euan Harrison [37:13]

12. Future Research Directions

• Rick Booxtra: Further research into "empire timber" and a project on concrete in post-independence Indonesia.
• Euan Harrison: Projects on British banks in colonial Africa and luxury hotels’ role during decolonization.

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• "We were interested in telling the story of West African architecture...not through what the British government had built...but rather how the colonial drive for raw materials...shaped the West African built environment." — Rick Booxtra [03:33]

• "Rather than thinking about these grand public buildings...the majority of the colonial built environment really is made up of warehouses, offices...not grand designs, but really formed a key part of this network of imperial trade." — Rick Booxtra [07:38]

• "We sort of...picked files that looked interesting, and from those began to get a sense of what worked and what led us to interesting architectural narratives...this was such a collaborative way of working..." — Euan Harrison [09:54]

• "We invited several architects and scholars...to engage with the archive, and then come up with shorter essays...in which they provide a different idea...and critically respond to...the archive." — Rick Booxtra [12:40]

• "Port Sunlight is a famous company town...built by Lever Brothers...at the same moment as he begins buying up these palm oil trading firms in West Africa. And this was the aspect of the Port Sunlight story that we felt had never really been told." — Euan Harrison [17:23]

• "By the kind of 1910s...they begin investing in quite substantial pieces of company owned infrastructure. Company towns, an entire harbor complex at a place called Barutu..." — Euan Harrison [21:35]

• "One of the most profitable things that they extracted was tropical timber. And here again, you see that initially there are other traders involved, local traders as well. And the African Timber Company, which is a UAC subsidiary, sort of eventually buys out all these other traders and really builds company towns..." — Rick Booxtra [23:10]

• "What is fascinating...empire timber, including timber...from the UAC's operation in West Africa, was used for post offices in London in the 1930s...So there really is a fascinating sort of material history that puts these buildings in Britain together with what we see in Africa." — Rick Booxtra [26:45]

• "The UAC becomes very adept at framing itself as an agent of a kind of broader kind of developmental modernity, particularly in African cities..." — Euan Harrison [29:28]

• "They would run these very extensive press campaigns showing images of their own office blocks under headings like 'Find buildings in richer country' or 'A gift to Ghana from the UAC...'" — Euan Harrison [31:16]

• "One of the images that I've always really found fascinating...is a photograph of a dwelling in West Africa, which is mud...the way the UAC, the company, thinks about West Africa as changing, and you see that reflected in the archive itself." — Rick Booxtra [34:49]

• "...an advertising image that seemed to say: if we want postcolonial Africa to work, we should work with the UAC and not against it. So I found this a very fraught and unstable and very, very rich image." — Euan Harrison [37:13]

Conclusion

This episode offers a fascinating look at how the United Africa Company—driven by business imperatives and commercial strategies—left a profound architectural legacy in West Africa over a century. By shifting the focus from state-centric narratives to those of commercial enterprise, the book and the discussion reveal new understandings about the colonial and postcolonial built environment, material flows, and visual cultures. The use of rich images, collaborative methodologies, and interdisciplinary essays underscore the book's innovative approach.

The book "Architecture, Empire and Trade: The United Africa Company" (Bloomsbury, 2025) is available as open access.