Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing British Crown colony in Southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally known as South Zambesia until Britain annexed it at the behest of the British South Africa Company. The colony was then renamed for that company’s founder, Cecil Rhodes. The bounding territories were Bechuanaland, Northern Rhodesia, Portuguese Mozambique and the Transvaal Republic. Since 1980, the colony's territory is the independent nation of Zimbabwe.
This southern region, known for its extensive gold reserves, was first purchased by the BSAC's Pioneer Column on the strength of a mineral concession extracted from its Matabele king, Lobengula, and various majority Mashona vassal chiefs in 1890. Though parts of the territory were laid-claim-to by the Bechuana and the Portuguese Empire, its first people, the "Bushmen", had possessed it for countless centuries beforehand and had continued to inhabit the region. Following the colony's unilateral dissolution in 1970 by the Republic of Rhodesia government, the Colony of Southern Rhodesia was re-established in 1979 as the successor state to the Republic of Zimbabwe Rhodesia which, in-turn, was the predecessor state of the Republic of Zimbabwe. Its only true geographical borders were the rivers Zambezi and Limpopo, its other boundaries being arbitrary, and merging imperceptibly with the peoples and domains of earlier chiefdoms of pre-colonial times.
The British colony was established de jure in 1923, having earlier been occupied, constructed and administered by the British South Africa Company and its sub-concessionaires who were mostly British subjects. In 1953, it was merged into the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which lasted until 1963. Southern Rhodesia was renamed Rhodesia and remained a de jure British colony until 1980. However, the Rhodesian government issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 and established a fully independent Rhodesia, which immediately became an unrecognised state. In 1979, it reconstituted itself under majority rule as Zimbabwe Rhodesia, which also failed to win international recognition. After a period of interim British control following the Lancaster House Agreement in December 1979, the country achieved internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe in April 1980.
History
Origin as "Rhodesia"
Initially, the territory was referred to as "South Zambezia", a reference to the River Zambezi, until the name "Rhodesia" came into use in 1895. This was in honour of Cecil Rhodes, the British empire-builder and key figure during the British expansion into southern Africa. In 1888 Rhodes obtained mineral rights from the most powerful local traditional leaders through treaties such as the Rudd Concession and the Moffat Treaty, which was signed by King Lobengula of the Ndebele people. "Southern" was first used in 1898 and dropped from normal usage in 1964, on the break-up of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. "Rhodesia" then remained the name of the country until the creation of Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979. Legally, from the British perspective, the name Southern Rhodesia continued to be used until 18 April 1980, when the Republic of Zimbabwe was promulgated.The British government agreed that Rhodes' company, the British South Africa Company, would administer the territory stretching from the Limpopo to Lake Tanganyika under charter as a protectorate. Queen Victoria signed the charter in 1889. Rhodes used this document in 1890 to justify sending the Pioneer Column, a group of white settlers protected by well-armed British South Africa Police and guided by the big game hunter Frederick Selous, through Matabeleland and into Shona territory to establish Fort Salisbury. In 1893–1894, with the help of their new Maxim guns, the BSAP defeated the Ndebele in the First Matabele War, a war which also resulted in the death of King Lobengula and the death of most of the members of the Shangani Patrol. Shortly after the disastrous BSAP Jameson Raid into the Transvaal Republic, the Ndebele were led by their spiritual leader Mlimo against the white colonials and thus began the Second Matabele War which resulted in the extermination of nearly half the British settlers. After months of bloodshed, Mlimo was found and shot by the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham and soon thereafter Rhodes walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo Hills and persuaded the impi to lay down their arms, effectively ending the revolt.
A legislative council was created in 1899 to manage the company's civil affairs, with a minority of elected seats, through which the BSAC had to pass government measures. As the company was a British institution in which settlers and capitalists owned most shares, and local black African tribal chiefs the remainder, and the electorate to this council was limited to those shareholders, the electorate was almost exclusively white settlers. Over time as more settlers arrived and a growing number had less than the amount of land required to own a share in the company or were in trades supporting the company as workers, successive activism resulted in first increasing the proportion of elected seats, and eventually allowing non-shareholders the right to vote in the election. Prior to about 1918, the opinion among the electorate supported continued BSAC rule but opinion changed because of the development of the country and increased settlement. In addition, a decision in the British courts that land not in private ownership belonged to the British Crown rather than the BSAC gave great impetus to the campaign for self-government. In the resulting treaty government self-government, Crown lands which were sold to settlers allowed those settlers the right to vote in the self-governing colony.
File:Cecil Rhodes ww.jpg|thumb|center|upright|Cecil Rhodes, Founding chairman of the board of directors of De Beers Mining Company, funded by Nathaniel, 1st Lord Rothschild
Century up to independence
The territory north of the Zambezi was the subject of separate treaties with African chiefs: today, it forms the country of Zambia. The first BSAC Administrator for the western part was appointed for Barotseland in 1897 and for the whole of North-Western Rhodesia in 1900. The first BSAC Administrator for the eastern part, North-Eastern Rhodesia, was appointed in 1895. The whites in the territory south of the river paid it scant regard though, and generally used the name "Rhodesia" in a narrow sense to mean their part. The designation "Southern Rhodesia" was first used officially in 1898 in the Southern Rhodesia Order in Council of 20 October 1898, which applied to the area south of the Zambezi, and was more common after the BSAC merged the administration of the two northern territories as Northern Rhodesia in 1911.As a result of the various treaties between the BSAC and the black tribes, Acts of Parliament delineating BSAC and Crown Lands, overlapping British colonial commission authority of both areas, the rights of the increasing number of British settlers and their descendants were given secondary review by authorities. This resulted in the formation of new movements for expanding the self-government of the Rhodesian people which saw BSAC rule as an impediment to further expansion.
The Southern Rhodesian Legislative Council election of 1920 returned a large majority of candidates of the Responsible Government Association and it became clear that BSAC rule was no longer practical. Opinion in the United Kingdom and South Africa favoured incorporation of Southern Rhodesia in the Union of South Africa, but, by forcing the pace of negotiation, the Southern Rhodesians obtained unfavourable terms and the electorate backed responsible government in a 1922 referendum.
In view of the outcome of the referendum, the territory was annexed by the United Kingdom on 12 September 1923. Shortly after annexation, on 1 October 1923, the first constitution for the new Colony of Southern Rhodesia came into force. Under this constitution Sir Charles Coghlan became the first Premier of First Cabinet of Southern Rhodesia and upon his death in 1927 he was succeeded by Howard Unwin Moffat.
During World War II, Southern Rhodesian military units participated on the side of the United Kingdom. Southern Rhodesian support for the Allied war effort was based on a mixture shared kinship and identity with Britain and support for democracy. Southern Rhodesian forces were involved on many fronts including the East and North African campaigns, Italy, Madagascar and Burma. Southern Rhodesian forces had the highest loss ratio of any constituent element, colony, dependency or dominion of the British Empire forces during World War II. Additionally, the Rhodesian pilots earned the highest number of decorations and ace appellations of any group within the empire. This resulted in the royal family paying an unusual state visit to the colony at the end of the war to thank the Rhodesian people.
Economically, Southern Rhodesia developed an economy that was narrowly based on production of a few primary products, notably chrome and tobacco. It was therefore vulnerable to the economic cycle. The deep recession of the 1930s gave way to a post-war boom. This boom prompted the immigration of about 200,000 white settlers between 1945 and 1970, taking the white population up to 307,000. A large number of these immigrants were of British working-class origin. The black population was about 6 million.
In the 1940s, the founding of a university to serve central African countries was proposed. Such a university was eventually established in Salisbury, with funding provided by the British and Southern Rhodesian governments and some private sources. One condition of British funding was that student admission should be based on "academic achievement and good character" with no racial distinction. University College of Rhodesia received its first intake of students in 1952. Until 1971 it awarded degrees of the Universities of London and Birmingham. In 1971 UCR became the University of Rhodesia and began awarding its own degrees. In 1980 it was renamed the University of Zimbabwe.