Northern Rhodesia was intensely unpopular among the vast African majority and its formation hastened calls for majority rule. As a result of this pressure, the country became independent in 1964 as Zambia. The geographical, as opposed to political, term "Rhodesia" referred to a region generally comprising the areas that are today Zambia and Zimbabwe. From 1964, it only referred to the former Southern Rhodesia. The name "Rhodesia" was derived from Cecil John Rhodes, the British capitalist and empire-builder who was a guiding figure in British expansion north of the Limpopo River into south-central Africa. Rhodes pushed British influence into the region by
Northern Rhodesia other British territories were fixed by Orders-in Council. The border between the British Central Africa Protectorate and North-Eastern Rhodesia was fixed in 1891 at the drainage divide between Lake Malawi and the Luangwa River, and that between North-Western Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia became the Zambezi River in 1898. The area of what became Northern Rhodesia, including Barotseland and land as far as Nyasaland to the east and to Katanga and Lake Tanganyika to the north, was placed under BSAC administration by an Order-in-Council of 9 May 1891, but no BSAC Administrator was sent to Barotseland until 1895, and the first