In the late nineteenth century, the Royal Niger Company expands along the Niger River through a network of treaties with established African states and trading systems. As its influence grows, those agreements begin to take on a different meaning within a European framework formalised in 1884, placing local systems of authority under pressure from a structure they were never part of defining. A company officer and a woman connected to the court of the Olu of Warri move through this transition from different positions, as commercial relationships give way to political control.