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 of the main railway line was reserved for European settlement and farming. In 1938, it was reported that the Native Reserves were overcrowded, while much of the land reserved for Europeans was unoccupied and unused In 1918, the Privy Council of the United Kingdom had rejected the British South Africa Company claims to unalienated land in Southern Rhodesia, and this raised questions about the company's claim to unalienated land north of the Zambezi. However, the company's claim in Northern Rhodesia was based on concessions granted rather than conquest and, although a Northern Rhodesian parliamentary Committee in 1921 recommended that these