Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked, self-governing colony of the British Empire in what is today the country of Zimbabwe.Palley, Claire (1966). The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia, 1888–1965: With Special Reference to Imperial Control. Clarendon P. ISBN 978-0-19-821631-5. The colony's territory was initially conquered and administered by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), which was founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes for the purpose of occupying and settling the region.Blake, Robert (1977). A History of Rhodesia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-29721-6. Following years of growing white immigration into the region, in 1922 the settler minority voted to reject entering into a union with South Africa in favour of establishing a settler-run legislative assembly under the framework of responsible government.Cussans, Charlton Francis (12 January 2024). "Whiteness is not enough: South Africa and the 1922 responsible government referendum in Southern Rhodesia". Historical Research. 97 (275): 147–166. doi:10.1093/hisres/htad026. ISSN 0950-3471.
The colony's economy declined significantly during the Great Depression and it experienced a high degree of white settler emigration and turnover.Phimister, Ian R. (1988). An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890–1948: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle. Longman. pp. 171–180. ISBN 978-0-582-64423-6. In the Second World War, Southern Rhodesian colonial forces actively participated and the war caused an economic boom.Phimister. An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890–1948: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle. p. 252. Following the war, the colony experienced a large population boom as many whites began to immigrate to the colony.Raftopoulos, Brian; Mlambo, Alois (15 September 2009). Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008. African Books Collective. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-77922-121-6. Southern Rhodesian politics were racially dominated by the white minority who restricted the right to vote based on a person's income or ownership of property.Palley. The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia, 1888–1965: With Special Reference to Imperial Control. p. 102. The settler-controlled government also passed racially discriminatory land-ownership restrictions, banned Africans from higher levels in the civil service for most of its history,Blake. A History of Rhodesia. p. 338. and implemented an extensive racial pass system that limited Africans' ability to live and work in most of the colony.Seymour, Lindsay F. (1961). "Legislation Affecting Africans in Urban Areas in Southern Rhodesia". The Rhodesia and Nyasaland Law Journal: 103–117.
In 1953, Southern Rhodesia entered into a union with the protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to form the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which dissolved in 1963 due to internal tension. In 1962, the right-wing Rhodesian Front party won the Southern Rhodesian general election. In 1965, the South Rhodesian government under Prime Minister Ian Smith issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence and oversaw the escalating Rhodesian Bush War between the white minority–controlled government and African nationalist forces.
Following the collapse of white-minority rule and the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, British rule was briefly reinstated in December 1979 until it was granted full independence as the Republic of Zimbabwe in April 1980.
History
Under the British South Africa Company (1889–1923)
In late 1889, the United Kingdom granted the British South Africa Company a Royal Charter authorizing the company to acquire, administer, and develop territory "north of British Bechuanaland and to the north and west of the South African Republic and to the west of the Portuguese Dominions." At the time, the region was recognized by the British to be under the nominal authority of King Lobengula, the leader of the Ndebele kingdom which controlled Matabeleland and the British forbid the company from taking any actions in his domain without his prior authorization and consent. Following the acquisition of the Rudd Concession from Lobengula in 1888, Rhodes quickly set to work on establishing a presence in the region. In 1890, the first company-backed expedition was launched when the Pioneer Column set out from South Africa and established Fort Salisbury (now Harare) in Mashonaland and began to develop it as the central hub for the administration of company-held territory.
In 1893, relations between the company and the Ndebele broke down following an Ndebele raid and the beginning of the First Matabele War. The war decisive defeat of the Ndebele, the death of the Lobengula, and the conquest and expansion of Company operations into Matabeleland. In 1895, the company unsuccessfully attempted to stage a coup in the neighbouring Transvaal Republic with the hope of seizing the territory on behalf of Britain. Company forces, led by the chief administrator Starr Jameson, planned to link up with British workers to overthrow the Transvaal government and request aid, at which point Company forces would link up and intervene to assist the rebels. However, the raid was a complete failure. The Transvaal government reacted quickly to the news of a hostile force entering their territory and managed to surround and captured Jameson's force. The raid was a serious diplomatic embarrassment for Britain, causing long-lasting damages to their relations with the Afrikaners, and nearly resulted in the company charter being revoked.
The capture of nearly the entire British South Africa Police force left the British South Africa Company with almost no men in the region to defend itself. The Ndebele, sensing the vulnerability of the company and a chance to drive out the newly established white presence in the region, rose up in revolt against the company and began launching attacks against undefended white properties and killing the colonists, beginning the Second Matabele War. Taken by surprise and completely unprepared, many white settlers were killed in the initial fighting and it was only with the arrival of reinforcements from South Africa that the war turned in favour of the settlers, though it would still take another year of fighting to pacify the territory. The British blamed the British South Africa Company for its recklessness during the Jameson raid and their treatment of the Africans as the principal causes of the uprising and began to take steps to curtail some of the company's authority to prevent them from happening again.
The reforms that followed began the slow transition away from Company rule towards settler control of government. In 1898, the name "Southern Rhodesia" became the official name for the colony following the promulgation of the Southern Rhodesia Order In Council on 20 October 1898. That same year a legislative council was created to manage civil affairs and to pass legislation. At first the Company held a fixed majority of the seats on the council with the minority of the seats being elected by the settlers, but over time the number of elected seats would expand and elected seats would outnumber unelected seats and expand with the growing population. Qualifications to vote for council members were nominally race-neutral, requiring that would-be voters either own greater than £75 in property or a registered mining claim in an electoral district, or have a salary over at least £50 per annum. In practice the restrictions excluded virtually all Africans from being able to vote, with the number of Africans registered to vote only reaching roughly fifty individuals by 1904. Opinion in the United Kingdom and South Africa favoured incorporation of Southern Rhodesia into the Union of South Africa but when given the choice, the Southern Rhodesian electorate voted in favour of greater autonomy in the form of a responsible government in a 1922 referendum.
Autonomous self-governance (1923–1953)
In view of the outcome of the referendum, the territory was annexed by the United Kingdom on 12 September 1923.Southern Rhodesia (Annexation) Order in Council, 30 July 1923 which provided by section 3 thereof: "From and after the coming into operation of this Order the said territories shall be annexed to and form part of His Majesty's Dominions, and shall be known as the Colony of Southern Rhodesia".Stella Madzibamuto v Desmond William Larder – Burke, Fredrick Phillip George (1969) A.C 645 – Authority for date of annexation having been 12 September 1923, being the date the Rhodesia (Annexation) Order in Council came into effectCollective Responses to Illegal Acts in International Law: United Nations Action in the Question of Southern Rhodesia by Vera Gowlland-DebbasStella Madzibamuto v Desmond William Larder – Burke, Fredrick Phillip George (1969) A.C 645 Shortly after annexation, on 1 October 1923, the first constitution for the colony came into force.Southern Rhodesia Constitution Letters Patent 1923 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.Bishi, George. Filthiest Gangs of Thugs': Anti-Fascism and Anti-Nazism Perceptions in Southern Rhodesia, 1930s to 1940s". South African Historical Journal 74, no. 1 (2022): 100–19. Southern Rhodesian forces were involved in East African, North African, Italy, and Burma campaigns and participated in the Battle of Madagascar. Southern Rhodesian suffered the highest loss ratio in 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.
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 both the British and Southern Rhodesian governments and 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 (UCR) 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.
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953–1963)