A History of Rhodesia

by Robert Blake

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 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.

Genres: History, Africa

435 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake was an English historian. He is best known for his 1966 biography of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, and for The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, which grew out of his 1968 Ford lectures. He was created a life peer as Baron Blake, of Braydeston in the County of Norfolk.

Lord Blake was editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a Trustee of the British Museum, and Chairman of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts.

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as a young teenager and needed to look up nearly every word. My mother, whose life was cut short by cancer, had once briefly lived in Zimbabwe (then S. Rhodesia), so I felt all those new words would somehow bring me closer to her. Indeed, I used her dictionary to look up all those words. The author was an eminent historian whose political biography of Disraeli I came to adore.

[Benjamin Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lord Blake is clearly an accomplished historian and author based on this book. However, this book would be more aptly titled A History of Rhodesian Politics. Blake's coverage of the politics in Rhodesia is superb and deserves praise. It does not cover all the major events of the colony or all its inhabitants. The viewpoints of the natives and Boers is noticeably absent. Blake explains in the introduction he originally planned for the book to only cover the era of Rhodesia under company rule. It becomes apparent by the lack of detail that Blake is not as well versed in the history outside this time. Again, what he does include is both informative and we'll put but lacking in detail. For anyone interested in world politics, this is a must read.