Rhodesia The first stage in acquiring territory was to enter into “treaties” with local rulers. Although the
Ndebele king,
Lobengula, had agreed not to enter into a treaty with any other power without prior British consent, and had granted mining concessions to the BSAC (including the right for the company to protect them), he consistently refused to delegate any general powers of government to the British South Africa Company. When the BSAC was unable to get Lobengula to sign the treaties on the agreed terms, they lied. However, the BSAC convinced the Colonial Office that it should declare a protectorate on the basis that a group of citizens of the
Transvaal Republic led by
Louis Adendorff planned to cross the
Limpopo River to settle and proclaim a
republic in Mashonaland. A protectorate was proclaimed by an Order-in-Council of 9 May 1891, initially covering Mashonaland and later
Matabeleland. This was an attempt to circumnavigate the Ndebele states and take the mashonaland without ever negotiating with any
Shona kingdom. The Adendorff party did attempt to cross the Limpopo in June 1891, but was turned back by a force of the BSAC police. The
Lozi of the
Barotseland formed a kingdom whose king,
Lewanika had begun his rule in 1876, but had been driven from power in 1884. After his return in 1885, his concerns about further internal power struggles and the threat of Ndebele raids prompted him to seek European protection. He asked
François Coillard of the
Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, which had set up a mission to the Lozi, to help him draft a petition seeking a British protectorate. This reached the Colonial Office in August 1889, but no immediate action was taken to accept it. Even before this, Cecil Rhodes, while attempting to obtain a Royal Charter for the BSAC, considered Barotseland as a suitable area for company operations and as a gateway to the copper deposits of Katanga. Rhodes sent Frank Lochner to Barotseland to obtain a concession and made an offer to the British government to pay the expenses of a Barotseland protectorate. Lochner sponsored the misconception that BSAC represented the British government, and on 27 June 1890, Lewanika gave his consent to an exclusive mineral concession. This (the Lochner Concession) gave the company mining rights over the whole of the area in which Lewanika was paramount ruler in exchange for an annual subsidy and the promise of British protection, a promise that Lochner had no authority to give. However, the BSAC advised the Foreign Office that the Lozi had accepted British protection. , authorized by
Hugh Marshall Hole. The Foreign Office had reservations over the nature and extent of the supposed protectorate and it never sanctioned the Lochner Concession, because it did not grant BSAC any administrative rights and it involved monopolies, prohibited in the BSAC Charter. However, in negotiations with the Portuguese government, Barotseland was claimed to fall within the British sphere of influence and the
Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 allocated the Barotse Kingdom's territory to the British sphere, although the boundary with Angola was not fixed until 1905. Lewanika protested that the terms of the treaty had been misrepresented to him. No BSAC Administrator was sent to Barotseland until 1895, and the first Administrator, Forbes who remained until 1897, did little to establish an administration. As the Foreign Office was not convinced that the Lochner Concession had established a British protectorate over Barotseland or given BSAC any rights to administer the territory, it considered that a new concession was necessary. It agreed in 1896 that a BSAC official would be appointed as Resident Commissioner to secure this concession. The first appointee died before taking up his post, but in October 1897,
Robert Coryndon reached Barotseland as Resident Commissioner. Coryndon, a former secretary of Cecil Rhodes and member of the
Pioneer Column, had been proposed by the BSAC, and his appointment was approved by the High Commissioner for South Africa as representing the British government. In his capacity as Resident, Coryndon declared Barotseland to be a British protectorate, resolving its previously anomalous position. Coryndon also confirmed that the 1890 mineral concession gave the BSAC no right to make land grants. In 1897 Lewanika signed a new concession (the Coryndon Concession) that gave the BSAC the rights to make land grants and to establish jurisdiction in parallel to the king's courts. Next, in 1900, Lewanika signed a further agreement, (the Barotse Concession), which resolved some details that were in dispute following the earlier concessions and was drafted in terms compatible with the Barotseland-North Western Rhodesia Order in Council, 1899. . Up to 1899, Northern Rhodesia outside of Barotseland was governed according to the Order-in-Council of 9 May 1891, which did not fix clear boundaries to the area involved. Before 1911, Northern Rhodesia was administered as two separate territories,
North-Western Rhodesia and
North-Eastern Rhodesia. The former was recognised as British territory by the Barotseland and North-Western Rhodesia Order-in-Council of 1899 and the later by the North-Eastern Rhodesia Order-in-Council of 1900. Both Orders-in-Council regularised the position of the BSAC Administrators, the first of whom for North- Eastern Rhodesia was appointed in 1895. In North-Western Rhodesia the first Administrator was appointed for Barotseland in 1897, becoming Administrator for all North-Western Rhodesia in 1900.
Other areas In 1890,
Alfred Sharpe undertook an expedition with the objective of acquiring Katanga. He only managed to make treaties with local rulers in North-Eastern Rhodesia, a number of whom later claimed that the contents of the treaty documents had been misrepresented to them. Katanga became part of the
Congo Free State. The boundary between the Congo Free State and British territory was fixed by a treaty in 1894. It was only after this treaty and the appointment of a separate Administrator for North- Eastern Rhodesia in 1895 that the area was brought under effective BSAC control. The British South Africa Company also considered acquiring interests in
Bechuanaland Protectorate and
Nyasaland, which was initially called the
British Central Africa Protectorate. During negotiations for its charter in 1889, the company discussed the possibilities of taking over the administration of Bechuanaland, which was already a British protectorate, and of working with, and possibly amalgamating with, the
African Lakes Company which was operating in Nyasaland. On 29 October 1889, a Royal Charter authorised the formation of the British South Africa Company's Police. On 1 Apr 1896 the Bechuanaland Border Police was renamed as the Bechuanaland Mounted Police (BMP). The African Lakes Company was itself attempting to become a
Chartered Company in the late 1880s, and Rhodes discussed its possible amalgamation with the BSAC in 1889. However, the Foreign Office judged the African Lakes Company as unsuitable to administer any territory, and by 1890 BSAC wished to take control of that company rather than amalgamate with it. The Lakes Company directors resisted, but by 1893 they had been ousted. In 1891, the
British Central Africa Protectorate was proclaimed on the understanding that the BSAC would contribute to the costs of its administration. However, its Commissioner, Harry Johnson, refused to act as a BSAC appointee, in particular on Rhodes' demand that all Crown lands in the protectorate should be transferred to BSAC control and that Johnson should also facilitate the transfer of African lands to it
Dispute with Portugal At the start of the 19th century, effective Portuguese government in Mozambique was limited to the ports of
Mozambique Island,
Ibo,
Quelimane,
Sofala,
Inhambane and
Lourenço Marques and the outposts at
Sena and
Tete in the Zambezi valley. Although Portugal claimed
sovereignty over
Angoche and a number of smaller Muslim coastal towns, these were virtually independent. In the Zambezi valley, Portugal had also initiated the
Prazo system of large leased estates under nominal Portuguese rule. By the end of the 18th century, this area in the valleys of the Zambezi and lower
Shire River were controlled by a few families that claimed to be Portuguese subjects but which were virtually independent. In the interior of what is today southern and central Mozambique, there was not even a pretence of Portuguese control. The nadir of Portuguese fortunes was reached in the 1830s and 1840s with the Zulus'
mfecane sacking of Lourenço Marques in 1833 and
Sofala in 1835;
Zumbo was abandoned in 1836;
Afro-Portuguese settlers near
Vila de Sena were forced to pay tribute to the
Gaza Empire and Angoche fought off a Portuguese attempt to prevent it from slave-trading in 1847. However, around 1840 the Portuguese government embarked on a series of military campaigns to bring the prazos and the Muslim coastal towns under its effective control. The General Act of the
Berlin Conference dated 26 February 1885, which introduced the principle of effective occupation was potentially damaging to Portuguese claims in Mozambique. Article 34 required a power acquiring land on the coasts of Africa outside of its previous possessions to notify the other signatories of the Act so they could protest against such claims. Article 35 of the Act provided that rights could only be acquired over previously uncolonised lands if the power claiming them had established sufficient authority there to protect existing rights and the freedom of trade. This normally implied making treaties with local rulers, establishing an administration and exercising police powers. Initially, Portugal claimed that the Berlin Treaty did not apply, and it was not required to issue notifications or establish effective occupation, as Portugal's claim to the Mozambique coast had existed for centuries and had been unchallenged. However, British officials did not accept this interpretation, as Henry O'Neill, the British consul based at
Mozambique Island said in January 1884: "There is a field of action open to [Britain] in South Africa which only a slight political barrier interposes to shut her out from. We refer, of course, to the area of Portuguese rule. This, it is true, at present is an undefinable area. Portugal has been a colonising power only in name. To speak of Portuguese colonies in East Africa is to speak of a mere fiction—a fiction colourably sustained by a few scattered seaboard settlements, beyond whose narrow littoral and local limits colonisation and government have no existence." To forestall British designs on the parts of Mozambique and the interior that O'Neill claimed Portugal did not occupy, Joaquim Carlos Paiva de Andrada was commissioned in 1884 to establish effective occupation, and he was active in four areas. Firstly, in 1884 he established the town of
Beira and Portuguese occupation of much of
Sofala Province. Secondly, also in 1884, he acquired a concession of an area within a 180 kilometre radius of Zumbo, which had been reoccupied and west of which Afro-Portuguese families had traded and settled since the 1860s. Although Andrada did not establish any administration immediately, in 1889 an outpost was established beyond the junction of the Zambezi and
Kafue River and an administrative district of Zumbo was established. Thirdly, in 1889 Andrada was granted another concession over Manica, which covered the areas both of the
Manica Province of Mozambique and the
Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe. Andrada succeeded in obtaining treaties over much of this area and establishing a rudimentary administration but he was arrested in November 1890 by British South Africa Company troops and expelled. Finally, also in 1889, Andrada crossed northern Mashonaland, approximately the area of the
Mashonaland Central Province of
Zimbabwe, obtaining treaties. He failed to inform the Portuguese government of these treaties, so these claims were not formally notified to other powers, as required by the Berlin Treaty. The British government refused to submit any disputed claims to arbitration, and on 11 January 1890,
Lord Salisbury sent the
British Ultimatum of 1890 to the Portuguese government demanded the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops from the areas where Portuguese and British interests in Africa overlapped.
Fixing boundaries The final stage in acquiring territory was to make bi-lateral treaties with other European powers. The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 was an agreement signed in
Lisbon on 11 June 1891 between the United Kingdom and
Portugal. It fixed the boundaries between the territories administered by the British South Africa Company in
Mashonaland and
Matabeleland, now parts of Zimbabwe, and
North-Eastern Rhodesia (now part of
Zambia) and
Portuguese Mozambique. It divided Manica, granting the western portion to the British South Africa Company. It also fixed the boundaries between the BSAC-administered territory of
North-Western Rhodesia (now in Zambia), and
Portuguese Angola. The northern border of the British territories was agreed as part of an Anglo-German Convention in 1890. The border between the British Central Africa Protectorate and the territory of the British South Africa Company in what is today Zambia was fixed in 1891 at the
drainage divide between Lake Malawi and the
Luangwa River.
Early administration The terms of the treaties under which the various protectorates were created north or south of the Zambezi provided for the rulers that signed them to retain significant powers over their own people. Despite this, the British South Africa Company either ended the powers of traditional rulers through warfare or eroded them by encouraging its own officials to take most of them over. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, those traditional rulers that remained were restricted to largely ceremonial roles only. The BSAC appointed an Administrator of Mashonaland, who was intended to have a similar function to a colonial governor, and later assistants in charge of districts. The first Administrator,
A. R. Colquhoun, was appointed in October 1890, soon after the
Pioneer Column had arrived at
Fort Salisbury. As first, the British government refused to recognise Colquhoun, and placed the governor of
Bechuanaland in immediate charge of the new protectorate, with the High Commissioner for South Africa given oversight of it. The governor legitimated the Administrator in July 1891 by appointing him Chief Magistrate, and as the British government did not want the expense of administration, it acquiesced to BSAC control. The Administrator, as Chief Magistrate, appointed assistants charged with keeping order in the various parts of Mashonaland, and from these a district administration developed. However, under Colquhoun and his successor from August 1891,
Leander Starr Jameson, there were less than 20 administrative staff, mostly inexperienced, so government was minimal. As the High Commissioner was usually resident in Cape Town, a Resident Commissioner was appointed to represent him in Rhodesia. The early BSAC Administrators had a dual role, being appointed Administrators by the company and Chief Magistrate by the Crown. Their position was regularised in 1894, when the British government appointed the British South Africa Company to administer what was beginning to be called Rhodesia, which at that time was not split into Northern and Southern sections. A Legislative Council was created in 1898 in Southern Rhodesia to advise the BSAC Administrator and the High Commissioner for South Africa in legal matters. Administration north of the Zambezi was rudimentary before 1901. In North-Eastern Rhodesia,
Abercorn and Fife were fortified outposts and the Administrator of North-Eastern Rhodesia was resident in
Blantyre in the British Central Africa Protectorate until
Fort Jameson was founded in 1899 as its headquarters. In Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia, there was no Secretariat until 1901. ==Land policies==