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 for self-determination in 1922, this objection ceased, and in 1927 the Conservative Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery gave Southern Rhodesia settlers the impression that he supported their claim to acquire the more productive parts of Northern Rhodesia. At the end of the First World War, the European population of Northern Rhodesia was tiny, about 3,000 compared with ten times as many in Southern Rhodesia, but it increased rapidly after the discovery of the Copperbelt in the 1920s. Northern Rhodesian settlers wanted self-government for the European minority electorate, separate from Southern Rhodesia. However, once the British government appeared to reject the idea