History of rugby union matches between the British and Irish Lions and other countries and 1938 Lions tours, North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia had been merged to form the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia; the colony of Southern Rhodesia still existed. For the 1955 and 1962 tours, these two territories had been combined and, along with modern-day Malawi, made up the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1964 Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were granted independence and became Zambia and Malawi respectively. Southern Rhodesia remained a colony and called itself Rhodesia (between 1964 and 1979) and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia (in 1979), though this name was not accepted by the British government who, until the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980,
Northern Rhodesia Ila and plateau Tonga peoples, but the United National Independence Party was dominant elsewhere. Roy Welensky, a Northern Rhodesian settler who was the Federal Prime Minister from November 1956 had convinced Alan Lennox-Boyd, Colonial Secretary from 1954 to 1959, to support Federation and to agree that the pace of African advancement would be gradual. This remained the view of the British cabinet under Harold Macmillan until after the declaration of the States of emergency, when it decided to set up a Royal Commission on the future of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to be held in 1960. This became