Zambia: Early British colonialism (1899-1945)

Updated January 2006

The accounts of David Livingstone's travels in the interior of Southern Africa (until his death in 1873) stimulated renewed interest in the area that was eventually to become Zambia. First he was followed by other missionaries, then by adventurers and traders bent on quick wealth or long-term commercial exploitation. Portuguese ambitions to link Angola in the west to Mozambique in the east overland stimulated preemptive land grabbing activities by Cecil John Rhodes' British South African Company (BSAC). The BSAC followed up its occupation of what is now Zimbabwe with missions to Zambia to lock the indigenous people into treaties giving the BSAC mineral exploitation and trading rights, followed by agreements effectively placing them under the BSAC's suzerainty. Treaties such as these, extracted by fraud, deceit and force, were signed with the Lozi in the southwest in 1890 and 1900, as well as the Tabwa, Lungu and the Mambe. By 1899 BSAC control over the Bemba and the Ngoni in the west had been established (Holmes 2004, Columbia Encyclopedia 2005a, Spitulnik & Kashoki 1996, Swanson undated, Lambert, T Undated).

Apart from furthering Rhodes' ambitions to extend British imperial sway from the Cape to Egypt, the purpose of the occupation was to extract raw materials to feed the manufacturing industries of Britain, while developing new markets for British manufactures. In particular the focus was on mineral prospecting and on land alienation for commercial farming by settlers. Initially the territory was used as a source of cheap labour for the mines and nascent industries of the southern colonies, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) (Andreasson 2001, Mtembu-Salter 2002). Such social services as were made available to the population were provided by the missionaries who were encouraged to settle and open schools and hospitals. They pioneered linguistic studies, published grammars and translated religious material for indigenous usage by converts and so encouraged the development of literacy in the vernacular (Manchisi 2004).

To facilitate the quest for labour, farmland and minerals a railway was begun in Livingston which reached Ndola in 1909; it was along this access that the major land seizures took place for white settlement and "surplus populations" were moved to reserves. Expectations of attracting large numbers of white settlers did not materialize and only about 1 500 arrived, swelling to a meagre 3 000 in 1914. In 1911 the Western (Barotseland) and Eastern parts of the territory were joined together to form the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia with its capital at Livingston, though Barotseland was permitted a high degree of autonomy (Columbia Encyclopedia 2005a, Holmes 2004, Hansungule et al 1998, Lambert Undated).

To raise revenue and to push Africans out of subsistence farming and into wage labour activities, a Hut Tax was imposed which was payable only in cash; the revolts that followed were ruthlessly suppressed and defaulters faced destruction of property and imprisonment. Soon the railways were shipping men to the mines of the south to earn the wherewithal to pay the taxes. This labour coercion turned to outright conscription during the First World War as 20 000 (Lambert, Undated says 50 000-100 000) men were forced to act as porters for British soldiers fighting in East Africa and a great deal of grain and many cattle was impounded for the war effort. The death rate was sufficiently high to strip entire areas of male labour and the land was earmarked for white settlement (Holmes 2004).

References

ANDREASSON, S 2001 "Divergent Paths of Development: The Modern World-System and Democratization in South Africa and Zambia", IN Journal of World-Systems Research, 7(2), fall, 175-223 [www] http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol7/number2/pdf/jwsr-v7n2-andreasson.pdf [PDF document, opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA 2005a, "Zambia", Sixth Edition, [www] http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Zambia.html [opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

HANSUNGULE, M, FEENEY, P & PALMER, R 1998 "Report on Land Tenure Insecurity on the Zambian Copper Belt", Oxfam GB in Zambia, [www] http://www.oxfam.co.uk/what_we_do/issues/livelihoods/landrights/downloads/full1998_ landtenureinsecurityreport.pdf [PDF document, opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

HOLMES, T 2004 "The History of Zambia", The Zambian, [www] http://www.thezambian.com/history/ [opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

LAMBERT, T UNDATED "A Short History of Zambia", IN Local Histories, [www] http://www.localhistories.org/zambia.html [opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

MANCHISI, PC 2004 "The Status of the Indigenous Languages in Institutions of Learning in Zambia: Past, Present And Future" IN African Symposium, 4(1) March, [www] http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/aern/manpisi.html [PDF document, opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

SPITULNIK, D & KASHOKI, ME 1996 "Bemba: A Brief Linguistic Profile", [www] http://www.anthropology.emory.edu/FACULTY/ANTDS/Bemba/profile.html [opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).

SWANSON, EC UNDATED "Society-LOZI" IN Ethnographic Atlas, Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, [www] http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7859 [opens new window] (accessed 26 Oct 2007).