Trade Winds on the Niger starts in 1830 on the west coast of Africa during the latter days of the slave trade when 'palm oil ruffians' began trading in the steamy creeks and mangrove swamps of the Niger delta, bartering their coloured beads and cases of gin for the golden oil and ivory which, if they did not die first from black water fever, malaria or dysentery, would make them rich. This is tale of their struggles in the area now known as Nigeria that led to the formation of the Royal Niger Company in 1886, the takeover of the company by Lever Brothers in 1920 and its amalgamation in 1929 with its rival, The African and Eastern Trade Company which then became the largest trading organization of its type in West Africa, if not the world. The old trading methods of Nigeria had to give way eventually not only to more modern techniques but also to the pressures of national independence and the book ends by charting the changes to the company through the first 70 years of the twentieth