The Occupation Of Southern Rhodesia

From Cecil Rhodes' articulation of his white-dream, and British emigration and settlement, the actions and attitudes of white Rhodesians and British officialdom have always been contentious, and relations between Zimbabwe and Britain of great public interest. This study of the history of white immigration into Zimbabwe, draws on quotations from government and other sources, now housed in British and Zimbabwean national archives. The author traces immigration into Southern Rhodesia from British occupation in 1890, to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. He considers emigration in the wider context of the changing nature of Britain and the Empire, and discusses the social engineering carried out by the Rhodesians and the British: on the one hand to try and ensure a dominant and economically and industrially successful white class in Rhodesia, and the maintenance of gender balance in the settler society; and on the other, to discourage immigration of other white nationals into Rhodesia. He goes on to show however, how these racially motivated policies and other historical developments meant that the Rhodesian dream was never realised.

The classical record of the BSACP - authorised in 1889 and disbanded in 1891. The first 85 pages tell the story of the unit's origins and pioneering services in protecting he settlers and merchants who were flooding into Mashonaland and Matabeleland. Never exceeding the Battalion strength, and with only limited British Army support, it ensured an initially peaceful British conquest of the area which would later be known as Southern Rhodesia. The occupation was so peacefull, in fact, that the Force was soon disbanded (with just 40 men being retained inservice as civil force, the Mashonaland Police). The bulk of the text is then devoted to a compilation of detailed biographical notes on each of the 897 men who served with the BSACP. They were recruited from a very broad range of European Adventures and soldiers of fortune.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event-known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885-galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa. The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would granted without evidence of a practical occupation, and the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader, a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty. This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of Chartered Companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European African colonies. The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, to intimidate an already broken society, and to play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade. There were some exceptions to this, however, the most notable of which was perhaps the Zulu Nation, a centralized monarchy of enormous military prowess that required a British colonial war, the storied Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, to affect pacification. Another was the amaNdebele, an offshoot of the Zulu, established as early as the 1830s in the southeastern quarter of what would become Rhodesia, and later still Zimbabwe, in the future. Both were powerful, centralized monarchies, fortified by an organized and aggressive professional army, subdivided into regiments, and owing fanatical loyalty to the crown. The Zulu were not dealt with by treaty, and their history is perhaps the subject of another episode of this series, but the amaNdebele were, and early European treaty and concession gatherers were required to tread with great caution as they entered their lands. It would be a long time before the inevitable course of history forced the amaNdebele to submit to European domination. Although treaties and British gunboat diplomacy played a role, it was ultimately war, conquest, and defeat in battle that brought the amaNdebele to heel. As various European interests tried to reach economic-based deals with the tribe's King Lobengula in Matabeleland, others considered how to actually physically seize it. Lobengula and his army may not be capable of deflecting the might of the British Empire, but they certainly retained the potential to fight. Rumors of gold in the land helped lead to Cecil John Rhodes obtaining a royal charter in October 1889 for a private company to exploit the resources. After tricking the amaNdebele with a dubious agreement, members of Rhodes' company began to establish a fledgling colony, and after the British defeated the amaNdebele and began driving them away from the land during the First Matabele War, the seeds were sown for two colonies to take root. But little did the British know just how politically turbulent those efforts would be, and how much more fighting would have to take place to consolidate their position.