First published in 1977, A History of Rhodesia is a history of the origins and course of modern European occupation of ‘Southern Rhodesia’, ‘Rhodesia’ as it has been termed since the old ‘Northern Rhodesia’ became independent under the name Zambia in 1963. Robert Blake describes the years of the Monomotapa; the Portuguese occupation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the Ndebele kingdom of the nineteenth century; the advent of Cecil Rhodes and the establishment of the Chartered Company which ruled Rhodesia until 1922; the period Southern Rhodesia enjoyed a self-governing colony from 1923 to 1951; the years of the Central African Federation from 1953 to its dissolution in 1963; and finally the dramatic course of events which led to Ian Smith’s government making a unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. The years since UDI are covered by a long epilogue that takes the story forward to the early months of 1977.
Rhodesian history is a strange and intriguing compound of romance, idealism, courage, arrogance, avarice and accident. Rhodesia’s story is not only that of economic, political, ideological and external forces which have shaped it—it is also that of the individuals who made—or failed to make decisions: Rhodes, Lobengula, Jameson, Lord Malvern, Roy Welensky, Garfield Todd, Joshua Nkomo, Ian Smith.
Written with access to many collections of papers not normally available to historians, Robert Blake’s book is a major contribution to the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa.