Rhodesia 1898 during the British South Africa Company's administration of the Rhodesias, and retained by the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia after the end of Company rule in 1923. This naming dispute dated back to October 1964, when Northern Rhodesia became independent from the UK and concurrently changed its name to Zambia. The Southern Rhodesian colonial government in Salisbury felt that in the absence of a "Northern" Rhodesia, the continued use of "Southern" was superfluous. It passed legislation to become simply Rhodesia, but the British government refused to approve this on the grounds that the country's name was defined by British
Northern Rhodesia Ila and plateau Tonga peoples, but the United National Independence Party was dominant elsewhere. Roy Welensky, a Northern Rhodesian settler who was the Federal Prime Minister from November 1956 had convinced Alan Lennox-Boyd, Colonial Secretary from 1954 to 1959, to support Federation and to agree that the pace of African advancement would be gradual. This remained the view of the British cabinet under Harold Macmillan until after the declaration of the States of emergency, when it decided to set up a Royal Commission on the future of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to be held in 1960. This became