|
|
Whose multinational? The relationship between British and Belgian national interests in the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (1906-1925).
| This paper evaluates the relationship between British and Belgian interests in the copper multinational Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), a company that was set up in 1906 to valorise the rich mineral ores in Katanga, the southern province of Congo. Following previous enquiries into the relationship between British and Dutch interests in multinationals such as Unilever and Royal Dutch Shell, the issue of ‘nationality’ in the managing of UMHK is scrutinized.
From the start, the British company Tanganyika Concessions Limited gained an important stake in UMHK next to the Belgian holding company Société Générale, because of a lack of expertise among Belgian capitalists in setting up a mining economy. British management initially outweighed the Belgian input in UMHK. British directors took the main decisions and devised the initial programs of labour recruitment and mining planning based on their previous experiences with gold mining in South Africa. Because of this, Union Minière had two principal offices: one general office in Brussels and one technical committee in London.
According to historian Bruce Fetter, this assignment of tasks did not please Belgian capitalists and even the Belgian King Albert I feared a ‘British invasion of Katanga’. This resulted in a gradual push aside of the British influence in UMHK. First, the technical committee was moved from London to Brussels in 1912. In 1918 a series of accusations of mismanagement led to the replacement of the British director in Congo, P.K. Horner by a Belgian, Edgar Sengier. And finally, the ties with the South-African economic network were loosened by replacing the South-African labour force in Katanga by Belgians. From 1920 on, the Belgian interests prevailed and the influence of the Belgian holding company Société Générale outstripped that of Tanganyaka Concessions Limited. From that point on, the Belgian direction could organize the copper business by itself.
Despite the noticed ‘national’ shifts in management, we can ask ourselves if these shifts really reflect national power struggles over the company? UMHK was indeed a company founded under Belgian law, but it was also a multinational that operated within the world market for non-ferrous metals. It faced huge technological challenges and a perennial labour shortage. The question remains whether the changes in management and the letting go of a South-African scheme of mining development had so much to do with ‘nationality’, rather than being based on business considerations? To what extent was there a feeling of national rivalry within the management of UMHK?
To answer these questions, we look at the archival records of Union Minière du Haut-Katanga and specifically at the functioning of the technical committee. The committee existed from 1906 to 1929, encompassing the very period in which Fetter notes the power shift in management. Prominent figures of both Tanganyika Concessions Limited and the Belgian executives of UMHK were members of the committee, discussing the managerial and technological development of the company. This source provides an excellent starting point to address the problem of nationality within this multinational company.
|
|
