British South Africa Company dated October 24, 1929 - First Day of Market Crash (Black Thursday) - South Africa

Beautifully engraved certificate from the British South Africa Company issued issued on October 24, 1929. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the coat of arms of British South Africa. This item has the signatures of the Company's Director and Secretary and is over 80 years old.


Certificate Vignette

The British South Africa Company (BSAC) was established by Cecil Rhodes through the amalgamation of the Central Search Association and the Exploring Company, Ltd., receiving a royal charter in 1889. Modeling the BSAC on the British East India Company, Rhodes hoped it would enable colonisation and economic exploitation across much of south-central Africa, as part of the "Scramble for Africa". The company's directors included the Duke of Abercorn, Rhodes himself and the financier Alfred Beit.

The company was empowered to treat with African rulers such as King Lobengula; to form banks; to own, manage and grant or distribute land, and to raise a police force (the British South Africa Police). In return, the company agreed to develop the territory it controlled; to respect existing African laws; to allow free trade within its territory and to respect all religions.

The company recruited its own army, and attacked and defeated the Matabele and Shona north of the Limpopo river. It was the first time in history Britons have used the Maxim gun in combat (five Maxims to five thousand Ndebele casualties). The company carved out (and for the following three decades administered) a territory which it named Zambezia, and later, Rhodesia, and which now covers the area occupied by the republics of Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In 1914, the royal charter was renewed, on condition that settlers in Rhodesia were given increased political rights. In 1922, the company entered negotiations with the government of the Union of South Africa, which was keen to take over the territory - a plan foiled by the colony's settlers, who voted against incorporation with South Africa. In 1923, Britain chose not to renew the BSA Co's charter, and instead accorded 'self-governing' colony status to Southern Rhodesia (today, Zimbabwe) and protectorate status to Northern Rhodesia (today, Zambia).

The BSAC was not able to generate enough profit to pay its shareholders dividends until after it lost direct administrative control over Rhodesia in 1923. In 1933, the BSAC sold its mineral exploration rights south of the Zambezi to the Southern Rhodesian government, but retained rights over Northern Rhodesian mineral rights, as well as the company's vast interests in mining, railways, real estate and agriculture across southern Africa.

The arms of the British South Africa CompanyIn 1964, the company was forced to hand over its mineral rights to the government of Zambia, and the following year, the British South Africa Company merged with the Central Mining & Investment Corporation Ltd and The Consolidated Mines Selection Company Ltd to form a mining and industrial company known as Charter Consolidated Ltd, of which slightly over one-third of the shares were owned by the British/South African mining company Anglo American plc.

History from Wikipedia and OldCompany.com.

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Stock Market Crash

The 1920s even had an equivalent of today’s high flying hard crashing Internet stocks. Shares of RCA, maker of radios and phonographs, soared 400 percent in 1928 alone. But by the middle of 1929, many investors had borrowed so much money that the only way to repay loans was to sell stocks. Prices began to fall, and volume began to escalate as brokers demanded cash to cover their potential losses.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average went from a low of 191 in early 1928 to a high of 300 in December, 1928 and peaked at 381 in September 1929. Due to the anticipation of continued increases in earnings and dividends,Price/Earnings ratios rose from a conservative 10 or 12 to 20, and higher for the market's favorite stocks. Many observers believed that stock market prices in the first six months of 1929 were overpriced, while some perceived that stocks were cheap. On October 3, the Dow began to drop, declining throughout the month of October.

On Thursday, October 24, 1929, the bottom began to fall out. Prices dropped precipitously as more and more investors tried to sell their holdings. By the end of the day, the New York Stock Exchange had lost four billion dollars, and it took exchange clerks until five o'clock AM the next day to clear all the transactions. By the following Monday, the realization of what had happened began to sink in, and a full-blown panic ensued. Thousands of investors -- many of them ordinary working people, not serious "players" -- were financially ruined. By the end of the year, stock values had dropped by fifteen billion dollars.

Many of the banks which had speculated heavily with their deposits were wiped out by the falling prices, and these bank failures sparked a "run" on the banking system. Each failed bank, factory, business, and investor contributed to the downward spiral that would drag the world into the Great Depression.