Rhodes And Rhodesia

This volume deals with the conquest and colonization of Zimbabwe and the establishment of Southern Rhodesia, from the beginnings of British involvement in Bechuanaland to the death of Cecil Rhodes. Its emphasis is on the white invaders and its chief concern is white individuals, their motives, actions, and influence on events. The British South Africa Company and the irregularity of its financial and political operations are dealt with in detail. Keppel-Jones also discusses the development in the midst of the indigenous population of an alien white society and state, from their crude beginnings to their emergence in a form still recognizable today. The reader is led to conclude that by 1902 Southern Rhodesia was already set on the road that would lead to the upheavals of the second half of the twentieth-century. The author examines the racial consciousness and prejudice of the white society and addresses an important question: why did the imperial government grant a royal charter to the BSA Company? The facts show conclusively that the imperial government had little interest in Central Africa or care for its fate except when foreign competition appeared. Keppel-Jones also reveals the important role played by black troops employed by the Company in suppressing the rebellions of 1896-7. For opposite reasons, neither blacks nor whites have been willing to recognize this; on the other hand the habit of the 'men-on-the-spot' of making and carrying out decisions without regard to their superiors in London is a commonplace of imperial history. One of the main themes of the book is the tension between the unofficial imperialists, straining at the leash, and the Colonial Office, struggling to hold them back. Rhodes and Rhodesia is based on extensive use of public records, mainly in the Public Record Office, London, and the National Archives of Zimbabwe, of collections of private papers, and of contemporary published works. Arthur Keppel-Jones is professor emeritus of history at Queen's University.

This is the earliest history of the British colony of Rhodesia, written only eight years after the first white settlement and based on exclusive access to the files of Cecil John Rhodes' British South Africa Company. Written by one of Britain's leading war correspondents, A History of Rhodesia is a book of its time: unashamedly jingoistic, pro-Empire, anti-Boer and anti-Matabele, it provides a remarkable insight into the personalities and mindset of the builders of the British Empire.

Cecil John Rhodes lived from 1853 to 1902, a brief span, and was the renowned and world-famous founder of Rhodesia (1890-1980), the leading personality and figure in the Victorian world's late nineteenth-century Africa empire. Rhodes' endeavours shaped the domains of late nineteenth and twentieth century Zambesia, and set down the trajectories marking southern Africa, while the Great Powers' record of empire in Africa proved greatly inferior to Rhodesia's. Zambesia's long history of continuous turbulence on a troubled plateau was reversed by Rhodes' Pioneer Column in 1890 when the 'First Rhodesians' arrived following five decades of itinerant white presence in Zambesia. Rhodesia was forged on blood, sweat and tears: no easy task. Rhodes had been the main architect and visionary behind its formation, the continental geopolitics around Zambesia, establishing enduring state boundaries in its undefined geographies, the legal and institutional systems, corporate world and political economy. All came from pioneer endeavour which reversed feudalism on the plateau and brought the fruits of civilisation and prosperity into Zambesia. Generations of Rhodesians followed this pioneering path for ninety years, building the longest-established modern state seen in Africa, one that succumbed to civil war and the perilous, shifting tides in Africa's histories. Apart from what is 'left behind', with few Rhodesians living in the inheritor state, there has remained continuity in Rhodesiana and its legacies on the world stage.

Paper presented at: Ship Control Systems Symposium, 1981, Ottawa.