Jenny over at 1870-1918 blog has returned from enviable adventures to continue her excellent series on the maneuverings and machinations that led to the creation of Rhodesia in the 1880s and ’90s.
Victorian morality required at least a fig leaf of legality for what really amounted to modern buccaneering. As Jenny’s work makes clear, the unsophisticated “savages” whose lands and riches Cecil Rhodes coveted were not so unsophisticated after all — Matabele King Lobengula played the legal game pretty well, considering the number of rascals in the field, all scheming and working their angles.
Click the link above and enjoy.
Chas says
Thanks for the link — I will have to read that blog from the beginning.
JimC says
Jenny does really good work.
Pat H says
The history of Rhodesia, in deed, right up its present incarnations as Zimbabwe and Zambia (Zambia was Northern Rhodesia), is indeed quite interesting. Jenny’s history of it looks set to cover a number of entries, and I’ll be curious to see to what year she takes us with this interesting story.