From the 1860s the kingdom declined, as its copper and ivory trade was usurped by Msiri in Garanganza (Katanga), allied with Tippu Tip and other traders, some of whom attacked and killed Mwata Kazembe VIII. Until his death in 1890 Msiri interfered in the succession of the Mwata Kazembe rulers, and chiefs on the western side of the Luapula paid tribute to him as their Paramount Chief instead of Kazembe. Colonial history Division between British and Belgian territories After Msiri's death the Luapula valley was divided in 1894 between Britain – the eastern shores of the Luapula and Lake Mweru became part of North-Eastern Rhodesia, administered by the British South Africa Company (BSAC) – and King Leopold II of Belgium's misnamed Congo Free State (CFS), or rather its agent, the Compagnie du Katanga, which took over the western shores. The Belgian colonial authorities, having killed Msiri were left with a vacuum. They appointed chiefs – not ones chosen from Msiri's subordinate chiefs (who had previously been subordinate to Mwata Kazembe) – but from what the Luba-Lunda called the 'owners of the land' who had preceded them; there was considerable instability in that part of Katanga as a result. “Belgian administration in Mweru-Luapula was glossed over by a thin veneer of traditional justifications.” This included ‘creating’ a tribe from what was a clan, the Bena Ngoma. Once Belgian colonial rule was established west of the Luapula, Mwata Kazembe's rule and territory, though not his influence, was confined to the eastern side. British rule imposed by force Although Mwata Kazembe X had signed a BSAC mineral concession and a British treaty brought to him by Alfred Sharpe in 1890, and allowed visits by British missionary pioneer Dan Crawford, when the BSAC tax collector Blair Watson took up residence on the Kalungwishi River in 1897, Mwata Kazembe refused to let the British flag be flown over his territory or taxes to be collected from his people, and he defeated an armed incursion by Watson's forces. Sharpe by now was governor of the British Central Africa Protectorate (Nyasaland), 1000 km away. It was he who had failed to secure Msiri's Garanganza kingdom as a British Protectorate by negotiation, and had later seen it taken from under British noses by the rival CFS through force. In 1899, in conjunction with Robert Codrington, acting BSAC Administrator of North-Eastern Rhodesia, Sharpe sent British officers with Sikh and