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Who colonized Zimbabwe?

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

In short

Who colonized Zimbabwe?

Britain, through Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company from 1890, then as the settler colony of Southern Rhodesia until majority rule on 18 April 1980.

Zimbabwe was named after the man who took it. Rhodes obtained mineral rights from Lobengula through a concession whose spoken promises differed from its written text, then used them to justify occupation.

Reference

Who ruled Zimbabwe, and when

before 1890
Ndebele and Shona states
1890–1923
British South Africa Company
1923–1965
Self-governing Southern Rhodesia
1965–1979
Unilateral white-minority Rhodesia

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Britain
Independence
18 April 1980
Colonised by
A company charter, in the name of a mining magnate
Land law
1930 Act reserved the best land for a small white minority
Liberation war
1964–1979, with tens of thousands killed

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1888

    The Rudd Concession, obtained from Lobengula on false terms.

  2. 1890

    The Pioneer Column occupies Mashonaland.

  3. 1896–97

    The First Chimurenga is crushed.

  4. 1930

    Land Apportionment Act divides the country by race.

  5. 1965

    Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority.

  6. 1980

    Majority rule and independence.

Context

What the record shows

The land question that dominates Zimbabwean politics today was created by statute in 1930 and left unresolved at independence.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Zimbabwe?
Britain, initially through Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company from 1890, then as the colony of Southern Rhodesia.
What was Rhodesia?
The colonial name for Zimbabwe, after Cecil Rhodes. A white-minority government declared unilateral independence in 1965; majority rule came in 1980.
When did Zimbabwe become independent?
18 April 1980.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Zimbabwe

  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.