Concept
Southern Rhodesia
Overview
Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked, self-governing colony of the British Empire in what is today the country of Zimbabwe. The colony's territory was initially conquered and administered by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), which was founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes for the purpose of occupying and settling the region. Following years of growing white immigration into the region, the settler minority voted to reject entering into a union with South Africa in favour of establishing a settler-run legislative assembly under the framework of responsible government.
The colony's economy declined significantly during the Great Depression and it experienced a high degree of white settler emigration and turnover. In the Second World War, Southern Rhodesian colonial forces actively participated and the war caused an economic boom. Following the war, the colony experienced a large population boom as many whites began to immigrate to the colony. Southern Rhodesian politics were racially dominated by the white minority who restricted the right to vote based on a person's income or ownership of property. The settler-controlled government also passed racially discriminatory land-ownership restrictions, banned Africans from having higher levels in the civil service for most of its history, and implemented an extensive racial pass system that limited Africans' ability to live and work in most of the colony.
In 1953, Southern Rhodesia entered into a union with the protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to form the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which dissolved in 1963 due to internal tension. In 1962, the right-wing Rhodesian Front party won the Southern Rhodesian general election. In 1965, the South Rhodesian government under Prime Minister Ian Smith issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence and oversaw the escalating Rhodesian Bush War between the white-minority controlled government and African nationalist forces.
Following the collapse of white-minority rule and the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement the colony was briefly reinstated under British supervision until was granted full independence as the Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Hence states are a recent development. The facts are, indeed, fatally against attribution of any long history to states provided we use a hard and fast conceptual definition of states. But our definition is founded on the exercise of a function, not on any inherent essence or structural nature. Hence it is more or less a verbal matter just what countries and peoples are called states. What is of importance is that…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
States what Southern Rhodesia is; the author is tied to Southern Rhodesia in the knowledge graph.
Naturally, inevitably, the students of political science have been preoccupied with this great historic phenomenon, and their intellectual activities have been directed to its systematic formulation. Because the contemporary progressive movement was to establish the unified state against the inertia of minor social units and against the ambitions of rivals for power, political theory developed the dogma of the…
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
The author is tied to Southern Rhodesia in the knowledge graph.
No committee-man can be continued in office for more than three years together. Any committee-man might be removed by the board of trade and plantations, now by a committee of council, after being heard in his own defence. The committee are forbid to export negroes from Africa, or to import any African goods into Great Britain. But as they are charged with the maintenance of forts and garrisons, they may, for that…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Close in meaning to Southern Rhodesia; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Southern Rhodesia
Related ideas
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- Great Depression
- Soviet Union
- World War II
- Zimbabwe
- British Empire
- China
- University of London
- English language
- Encyclopædia Britannica
- Shona language
- Northern Rhodesia
- Nyasaland
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of A. C. Grayling.