Julie Bonello, ‘The Development of Early Settler Identity in Southern Rhodesia: 1890-1914′, International Journal of African Historical Studies 43, 2 (2010).

introductory paragraph:

White settlement in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, is little more than a century old, yet its development is a significant and exceptional episode in the complex history of colonial Africa. Like many incursions into Africa during the Scramble period of the late-nineteenth century, the colonization of Southern Rhodesia involved devastating conflict, economic upheaval and a reorganization of indigenous society predicated on importing the supposed benefits of European progress. British interest in southern Africa had intensified due to a combination of economic and strategic factors, especially lucrative gold deposits in the Witwatersrand within the Boer-ruled South African Republic, which had led to speculation of a “Second Rand.” As a primarily trade-driven empire, Britain’s colonial policy usually followed the inexpensive “indirect rule” model of administering through local elites, making settler colonialism, particularly settler rule, very rare. Yet in Southern Rhodesia a precariously small minority of white colonists came to assume political power of the country barely thirty years after its initial occupation in 1890. This development was fueled by the formation of a settler identity that not only ensured the superior political and socioeconomic position of white Rhodesians with respect to indigenous Africans, but also carved out distinctions between themselves and other Europeans. Though the Rhodesian settler community was comprised of different social and economic backgrounds, this “island of white” quickly developed strong local interests and ultimately obtained responsible government from Britain in 1923 — the first step towards greater political sovereignty as a dominion within the British Empire. Settlers’ enduring sense of themselves as a distinct people with a separate identity had a profound impact on their political ambitions and helped account for their resistance to black majority rule during the decolonization era. Thus when hopes for autonomy under white rule remained unfulfilled,. Southern Rhodesia declared unilateral independence in 1965, a drastic measure that would draw international criticism and push the settler government into a crippling fifteen-year civil war against African nationalists that eventually ended in white Rhodesia’s defeat. The chain of events that mark Zimbabwe’s tumultuous history since the Second World War has its basis, in part, with the fledgling group of pioneers who established a narrow but tenacious hold on Rhodesia in the 1890s. Studying the early self-perceptions of these settlers, therefore, sheds new and important light on the colonial era of Zimbabwean history.