♦ IV ♦
The 'forward' policy of the British South Africa Company was inspired by Edmund Davis.7 Speaking to the shareholders of that company on 23 February 1926, he told them:
.
. . When looking at the map not many years ago, I was somewhat struck
by the position of the Katanga and with what was taking place over the
Northern Rhodesia Congo border. In the Katanga they have a copper belt
about 225 miles long and about 30 to 60 miles wide. It was early in
1923—or it may have been late in 1922—that I suggested to the members
of this board that they should place the development, or at any rate
the prospecting, of Northern Rhodesia in the hands of syndicates with
ample capital, properly managed, and with the necessary technical staff
at their disposal. If the result of that policy proves me to have been
correct, then credit will be due to the board and not to me, for I only
initiated the policy and it had to be approved by the members of the
board, and if that policy is correct, you will be surprised at no
distant date by the results which will be obtained. . . .
'
He had become a director of the B.S.A. Company in 1925 and was knighted
in 1927. He was thus a most important link between the B.S.A. Company
and the Rhodesian interests of Anglo American Corporation, before
Ernest Oppenheimer himself became a director of the B.S.A. Company. He
joined the board of Anglo American Corporation in 1928, and was deputy
chairman of Rhodesian Anglo American until his death on 20 February
1939. Another important early link between Anglo American Corporation
and the B.S.A. Company was the late Sir Drummond Chaplin, who had been
Administrator both of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and who became a
director both of the 'Chartered' company and of Anglo American
Corporation.
