Rhodesia (region) Rhodesia (region) Rhodesia is a historical region in southern Africa whose formal boundaries evolved between the 1890s and 1980. Demarcated and named by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), which governed it until the 1920s, it thereafter saw administration by various authorities. It was bisected by a natural border, the Zambezi. The territory to the north of the Zambezi was officially designated Northern Rhodesia by the Company, and has been Zambia since 1964; that to the south, which the Company dubbed Southern Rhodesia, became Zimbabwe in 1980. Northern and Southern Rhodesia were sometimes informally called "the Rhodesias". The term "Rhodesia"
Northern Rhodesia of further white minority governments in Africa, talk of amalgamation resumed. In 1927, the British government appointed the Hilton Young Commission on the possible closer union of the British territories in East and Central Africa. Its majority thought that Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland should seek closer links with East Africa, but the minority report favoured linking these two territories with Southern Rhodesia on economic grounds. Even before the Commission's report was published, there were discussions between the Northern Rhodesian settlers and the Southern Rhodesian government on the terms of a total union of the two Rhodesias as a single colony.