The land north of the Zambezi was taken by a mining company, ruled from London as a "protectorate", and made to pay for itself with African labour. Its copper made fortunes in the City of London. When Zambia became independent on 24 October 1964, it was one of the world's great copper producers and had barely a hundred African university graduates.
The land that became Zambia was home to powerful states: the Lozi kingdom of Barotseland on the upper Zambezi floodplain, the Bemba in the north-east, Lunda, Tonga, Ngoni and many others. Copper had been mined and worked here for centuries before any European company arrived. Trade routes ran east to the Indian Ocean and west to Angola.
David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary, reached the great falls on the Zambezi in 1855 and named them after Queen Victoria. Their local name is Mosi-oa-Tunya, "the smoke that thunders". He died at Chitambo, in today's Zambia, in 1873.
Cecil Rhodes wanted the land north of the Zambezi as a gateway to the copper of Katanga. The Lozi king Lewanika, facing unrest at home and raids from the Ndebele, wanted the protection of Queen Victoria. In June 1890 Rhodes's agent Frank Lochner obtained a concession giving the British South Africa Company mining and commercial rights over Lewanika's kingdom. Lewanika believed he was dealing with the British government. He was dealing with Rhodes's company.
The Company ran the territory as two units, North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia, and merged them in 1911 as Northern Rhodesia, with its capital at Livingstone, overlooking the Victoria Falls. Barotseland kept a special status inside it. For the Company the territory was mainly a reservoir of cheap labour: a hut tax forced men to walk south to work in the mines and farms of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.
Company rule had become too expensive for the Company and an embarrassment for London. On 1 April 1924 the Colonial Office took over, and Sir Herbert Stanley became the first governor. The capital was moved to the new planned city of Lusaka in 1935.
On paper Northern Rhodesia was a protectorate where African interests came first. In practice Africans lived under pass laws and colour bars, white settlers dominated the Legislative Council, and the British South Africa Company kept its mineral rights, collecting royalties on every ton of copper until independence.
From the late 1920s, huge copper deposits were opened up in the north. Mines at Roan Antelope (Luanshya), Nkana (Kitwe), Mufulira and Nchanga made the Copperbelt one of the richest mining regions on earth. The companies' head offices were in London and Johannesburg. African miners were paid a fraction of what white miners earned and were barred from skilled jobs.
In May 1935 the government raised the African poll tax on the Copperbelt from 12 to 15 shillings a year. Miners struck at Mufulira, Nkana and Roan Antelope. At Roan Antelope on 29 May police fired on the crowd and six people were killed. A commission blamed the abrupt tax rise but did not question the tax itself.
In 1940, in wartime, when Britain needed copper badly, African miners struck again at Nkana and Mufulira for higher pay, after white miners had won a rise by striking. Soldiers fired on the strikers at Nkana. Seventeen Africans died. The Forster Commission that followed gave small increases, but the colour bar stayed.
African political organisation grew after the Second World War. The Northern Rhodesia Congress was founded in Lusaka in 1948 and renamed the African National Congress in 1951 under Harry Nkumbula. Its main fight was against federation with white-ruled Southern Rhodesia.
Britain went ahead anyway. From 1 August 1953 Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were joined in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, dominated by white settlers in Salisbury. Copper revenue from the north helped build Salisbury and the Kariba Dam, while Africans in Northern Rhodesia saw little of it.
Kenneth Kaunda, a teacher's son from Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, became secretary-general of the ANC in 1953. In October 1958 he broke away to form the more militant Zambia African National Congress. It was banned in March 1959 and Kaunda was jailed. On his release in January 1960 he became president of the new United National Independence Party (UNIP).
In 1961, when Britain proposed a constitution that would still leave Africans short of a majority, UNIP launched the "Cha-cha-cha" campaign of civil disobedience across the Northern and Luapula provinces: roads blocked, bridges and government buildings burned. Britain revised the constitution. After elections in October 1962, UNIP and the ANC formed the first African-led government. The Federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963, and Kaunda became Prime Minister in January 1964.
On 18 May 1964 in London, Kaunda and the Litunga (king) of Barotseland, Sir Mwanawina Lewanika III, signed the Barotseland Agreement, which brought Barotseland into the new state with special rights. Zambia became independent on 24 October 1964, a republic from day one, with Kaunda as President. The British South Africa Company gave up its mineral rights in return for compensation from the British and Zambian governments.
Zambia was named after the Zambezi. Kaunda ruled until 1991 and supported the liberation movements of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique, paying a heavy price in raids and closed borders. Our partner sites tell the story from the African side:
David Livingstone is buried in Westminster Abbey, and the David Livingstone Birthplace museum is in Blantyre, near Glasgow. The Colonial Office files on Northern Rhodesia, the 1935 and 1940 commissions and the Federation are at The National Archives in Kew.
In the town of Livingstone, the old colonial capital, see the Livingstone Museum, the colonial buildings and Victoria Falls. In Lusaka, the Freedom Statue and the National Museum. On the Copperbelt, the Copperbelt Museum in Ndola. In Western Province, the Kuomboka ceremony, when the Litunga moves from the flooded plain to higher ground, is one of Africa's great royal festivals.
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
Victoria Falls and Zambia:
In London:
Southern Rhodesia, UDI and independence in 1980.
Nyasaland, Chilembwe and the "police state" of 1959.
The man both Rhodesias were named after.
All of Britain's African territories, country by country.
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