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 cattle farming in Barotseland, but Northern Rhodesia had attracted little white settlement, in contrast to its southern neighbour. Unlike Southern Rhodesia, which had seen a flood of fortune-seeking prospectors seeking to set up independent mines, Northern Rhodesia's mining policy was to agree large-scale deals with major commercial mining companies. Large-scale mining on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt started after 1924 and was mainly financed from the United States of America and South Africa. Chester Beatty's and Sir Edmund Davis's Selection Trust already had an interest in the fairly small Bwana Mkubwa copper mine, which had opened in 1901 on the site