in 1964. In the 1930s, the BSAC was able to collect royalties on all copper mined and was a large shareholder in the main mining companies. Until decolonization, the company therefore became a very lucrative investment opportunity, yielding very high return to investors. Territorial acquisitions Rhodesia The first stage in acquiring territory was to enter into treaties with local rulers. Although the Ndebele king, Lobengula, had agreed not to enter into a treaty with any other power without prior British consent, and had granted mining concessions to the BSAC (including the right for the company to protect them), he consistently refused to delegate any general powers of government to the British South Africa Company. However, the BSAC convinced the Colonial Office that it should declare a protectorate on the basis that a group of citizens of the Transvaal Republic led by Louis Adendorff planned to cross the Limpopo River to settle and proclaim a republic in Mashonaland. A protectorate was proclaimed by an Order-in-Council of 9 May 1891, initially covering Mashonaland and later Matabeleland. The Adendorff party did attempt to cross the Limpopo in June 1891, but was turned back by a force of the BSAC police. The Lozi of the Barotseland formed a kingdom whose king, Lewanika had begun his rule in 1876, but had been driven from power in 1884. After his return in 1885, his concerns about further internal power struggles and the threat of Ndebele raids prompted him to seek European protection. He asked François Coillard of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, which had set up a mission to the Lozi, to help him draft a petition seeking a British protectorate. This reached the Colonial Office in August 1889, but no immediate action was taken to accept it. Even before this, Cecil Rhodes, while attempting to obtain a Royal Charter for the BSAC, considered Barotseland as a suitable area for company operations and as a gateway to the copper deposits of Katanga. Rhodes sent Frank Lochner to Barotseland to obtain a concession and made an offer to the British government to pay the expenses of a Barotseland protectorate. Lochner sponsored the misconception that BSAC represented the British government, and on 27 June 1890, Lewanika gave his consent to an exclusive mineral concession. This (the Lochner Concession) gave the company mining rights over the whole of the area in which Lewanika was paramount ruler in exchange for