Postage stamps and postal history of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Postage stamps and postal history of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, also known as the Central African Federation (CAF), was a semi-independent state in southern Africa that existed from 1953 to the end of 1963. The state included the former self-governing (since 1923) Colony of Southern Rhodesia and the British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland. The Federation officially ended on 31 December 1963, when Northern Rhodesia gained independence from the United Kingdom as the new nation of Zambia and Nyasaland gained independence as the new nation of Malawi. Southern Rhodesia then became
What Is a Nation? and continues to be invoked. Political historian Karl Deutsch, in a quote sometimes mistakenly attributed to Renan, said that a nation is "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours". Benedict Anderson's 1983 work Imagined Communities, which states that a nation is an "imagined political community", argues that Renan contradicts himself when he says French people must have forgotten the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, yet does not explain what it is. In other words, Renan assumes that all his readers will remember the very massacre he says they have forgotten.