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Who colonized Zambia?

Southern Africa — the powers that ruled Zambia, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Zambia?

Britain, through Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company from the 1890s and then as the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia until independence on 24 October 1964.

Northern Rhodesia was run as a labour reserve and a copper mine, with education deliberately limited; Zambia entered independence with about a hundred graduates.

Reference

Who ruled Zambia, and when

before 1890
Lozi, Bemba, Ngoni and other polities
1890–1924
British South Africa Company
1924–1964
Northern Rhodesia

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Britain
Independence
24 October 1964
Copper
Profits largely repatriated; little industrial base left at independence
Migrant labour
Men recruited to mines under contracts that split families
Graduates in 1964
Around 100 university graduates in a country of 3.5 million

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1890

    Lochner Concession signed with the Lozi king.

  2. 1928

    Copperbelt mining begins on an industrial scale.

  3. 1935 & 1940

    Copperbelt strikes met with lethal force.

  4. 1953–63

    Central African Federation imposed against African opinion.

  5. 1964

    Independence.

Context

What the record shows

The Central African Federation of 1953 tied the territory to settler-ruled Southern Rhodesia against overwhelming African objection, and its collapse opened the way to independence.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Zambia?
Britain, initially via the British South Africa Company from 1890, then as the Northern Rhodesia protectorate.
What was Northern Rhodesia?
The colonial name for Zambia, administered first by Rhodes's chartered company and from 1924 by the British Colonial Office.
When did Zambia become independent?
24 October 1964.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Zambia

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.