thumb|300px|right|Flag of the Royal Niger Company
The Royal Niger Company was a mercantile company chartered by the British government in the nineteenth century. It was formed in 1879 as the United African Company and renamed to National African Company in 1881 and to Royal Niger Company in 1886. In 1929, the company became part of the United Africa Company,
The company existed for a comparatively short time (1879–1900) but was instrumental in the formation of Colonial Nigeria, as it enabled the British Empire to establish control over the lower Niger against German competition during the 1890s. In 1900, the company-controlled territories became the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, which was in turn united with the Northern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria in 1914 (which eventually gained independence within the same borders as Nigeria in 1960). The Royal Niger Company was eventually integrated into Unilever.
United African Company
Richard Lander first explored the area of Nigeria as the servant of Hugh Clapperton. In 1830, he returned to the river with his brother John; in 1832, he returned again (without his brother) to establish a trading post for the African Steamship Company" at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers. The expedition failed, with 40 of the 49 members dying of fever or wounds from native attacks. One of the survivors, Macgregor Laird, subsequently remained in Britain but directed and funded expeditions to the country until his death in 1861. He opposed the failed Niger expedition of 1841 but the success of the Pleiads first mission in 1854 led to annual trips under Baikie and the 1857 foundation of Lokoja at the Niger–Benue confluence.
There were no voyages for the three years following Laird's death, but the establishment of the was soon followed by several other firms. The competition reduced prices to the point that profits were minimal. Arriving in the region in 1877, George Goldie argued for the amalgamation of the surviving British firms into a single monopolistic chartered company, a method contemporaries supposed had been buried with the ultimate failure of the East India Company following the Sepoy Rebellion. By 1879, he had helped combine James Crowther's WAC, David Macintosh's , and the Williams Brothers' and James Pinnock's firms into a single ; he then acted as the combined firm's agent in the territory. A native attack on the UAC's outpost at Onitsha in 1879 was repulsed with help from HMS Pioneer, The death of Léon Gambetta the same year deprived the French companies of their support within the French government and the strong subsidies it had been providing them. and ruin its competition in a two-year price war: by October 1884 all three had permitted him to buy out their interests in the region and the NAC's annual report for 1885 was able to crow that it "remained alone in undisputed commercial possession of the Niger–Binué region". Similarly, when King Jaja of Opobo organized his own trading network and even began running his own shipments of palm oil to Britain, he was lured onto a British warship and shipped into exile on Saint Vincent on charges of "treaty breaking" and "obstructing commerce". (normally shortened to the Royal Niger Company), with Lord Aberdare as governor and Goldie as vice-governor.
Niger Company
It was, however, evidently impossible for a chartered company to hold its own against the state-supported protectorates of France and Germany, and in consequence its charter was revoked in 1899 and, on 1 January 1900, the Royal Niger Company transferred its territories to the British Government for the sum of £865,000. The ceded territory together with the small Niger Coast Protectorate, already under imperial control, was formed into the two protectorates of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria.