Northern Rhodesia Police Northern Rhodesia Police The Northern Rhodesia Police was the police force of the British ruled protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). In 1889 Northern Rhodesia, bounded by Angola (Portuguese West Africa), the Belgian Congo, German East Africa, British Central Africa (Nyasaland now Malawi), Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa), Mashonaland and Matabeleland (Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe), Bechuanaland (Botswana) and the Caprivi strip of German South West Africa (Namibia), was not a political unit and had no name at all. Customary law was administered among the 70 odd tribes which populated the Territory by their chiefs. Some chiefs were, willingly or not, in
Northern Rhodesia to justify the capital cost of building a railway to the coast, but expeditions between 1899 and 1901 proved their value. Copper deposits found in Northern Rhodesia before the First World War proved uneconomic to develop. In 1906 Union Minière du Haut Katanga was formed to exploit the Katanga mines. King Leopold wanted a railway entirely in Congolese territory, linked to the Congo River, but in 1908, he agreed with the British South Africa Company to continue the Rhodesian railway to Elizabethville and the mines. Between 1912, when full-scale copper production began, until 1928 when a Congolese line was completed,