Company rule in Rhodesia Africa. The Company's charter was duly revoked by Whitehall in 1923, and Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing colony of Britain in October that year. Northern Rhodesia became a directly-run British protectorate in April 1924. Amid the Scramble for Africa during the 1880s, the South African-based businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes envisioned the annexation to the British Empire of a bloc of territory connecting the Cape of Good Hope and Cairo—respectively at the southern and northern tips of Africa—and the concurrent construction of a line of rail linking the two. On geopolitical maps, British territories were generally marked in red or
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Rhodesia would dominate the property and income franchise (which excluded the vast majority of Africans) owing to its much larger European population. A federation was intended to curtail this. Huggins was thus the first Prime Minister from 1953 to 1956, and was followed by Sir Roy Welensky, a prominent Northern Rhodesian politician, from 1956 to the Federation's dissolution in December 1963. The fate of the Federation was contested within the British Government by two principal Ministries of the Crown in deep ideological, personal and professional rivalry – the Colonial Office (CO) and the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) (and previously with