British South Africa Company established

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Domains

Colonialism and colonisation

Dates

Date of occurrence 1889-1923

Places

South Africa (Location)
Zimbabwe (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The British South Africa Company was formed by Cecil Rhodes and the financier Alfred Beit on the model of the British East India Company. It's aim was the economic exploitation of south-central Africa. It received a Royal Charter in 1889 and lost the charter in 1923 when the areas it controlled were given colonial status as Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe). The Company, like the East India Company before it, was empowered to recruit its own army, and it used this to defeat and expropriate the Matabele and the Shona in the first and second Matabele wars (1893, 1896-7).

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

99 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "British South Africa Company established". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5476, accessed 26 April 2024.]

Save this article