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irrigation system. There are no aqueducts such as Europeans or Arabs might have built, but water furrows have been carried on admirably calculated gradients for miles along the hill-sides. The amount of labour which has been expended on the great villages between Inyanga and the Zambezi is astounding. On one site, the Niekerk Ruins, an area of fully 50 sq. m. is covered with uninterrupted lines of walls; It is an interesting question which may be solved by future explorations whether these settlements do not extend north of the Zambezi. Intrenchments like those of the Niekerk Ruins have been reported from the south-east of Victoria Nyanza, and Major Powell Cotton has published a photograph from the Nandi country which exhibits a structure precisely similar to the hill forts of Inyanga. (See also Zimbabwe; Monomotapa.)
See D. Randall-MacIver, Mediaeval Rhodesia (London, 1906); R. N. Hall and W. G. Neal, The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia (London, 1902); Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1875 and 1876; Journal of the R.G.S., 1890, 1893, 1899, 1906; Journal of Anthropl. Inst., vols. xxxi., xxxv.
History.—There is evidence that from the 10th or 11th centuries onward the lands now forming Rhodesia were inhabited by Bantu-negroes who had made some progress in civilization and who traded with the Arab settlements at Sofala and elsewhere on the east coast (see Archaeology above). From the 15th century, if not earlier, until about the close of the 18th century, a considerable part of this area was ruled by a hereditary monarch known as the Monomotapa, whose zimbabwe (capital) was, in the earlier part of the period indicated, in what is now Mashonaland. Some of the Monomotapas during the 16th and 17th centuries entered into political and commercial relations with the Portuguese (see Monomotapa and Zimbabwe). The Monomotapa “empire” included many vassal states, and probably fell to pieces through intertribal fighting, which greatly reduced the number of inhabitants. In the early years of the 19th century the tribes appear to have lost all cohesion. The people were mainly agriculturists, but the working of the gold-mines, whence the Monomotapas had obtained much of their wealth, was not wholly abandoned.
The modern history of the country begins with its invasion by the Matabele, an offshoot of the Zulus. Mosilikatze, their first chief, was a warrior and leader who served under the Zulu despot Chaka. Being condemned to death by Chaka, Mosilikatze fled, with a large division of the Zulu army. About 1817 he settled in territories north of the Vaal, not far from the site of Pretoria; and in 1836 a treaty of friendship was entered into with him by the governor of Cape Colony. In the same year a number of the “trek Boers” had crossed the Vaal river, and came in contact with the Matabele, who attacked and defeated them, capturing a large number of Boer cattle and sheep. In November 1837 the Boers felt themselves strong enough to assail Mosilikatze, and they drove him and his tribe north of the Limpopo, where they settled and occupied the country subsequently known as Matabeleland, In 1868 Mosilikatze died. Kuruman, son and recognized heir of the old chieftain, had disappeared years before, and though a Matabele who claimed to be the missing heir was brought from Natal he was not acknowledged by the leading indunas, who in January 1870 invested Lobengula, the next heir, with the chieftainship. Those Matabele who favoured the supposed Kuruman were defeated in one decisive battle, and thereafter Lobengula, whose kraal was at Bulawayo, reigned unchallenged. At this time the Matabele power extended north to the Zambezi, and eastward over the land occupied by the Mashona and other Makalanga tribes. North of the Zambezi the western districts were ruled by the Barotse (q.v.), while the eastern portion had been overrun by other tribes of Zulu-Xosa origin, among whom the Agoni were the most powerful. The explorations of David Livingstone, Thomas Baines (1822–1875), Karl Mauch, and other travellers, had made known to Europe the general character of the country and the existence of great mineral wealth. Lobengula was approached by several “prospectors” for the grant of concessions; among them two Englishmen, Baines in, 1871 and Sir John Swinburne in 1872, obtained cessions of mineral rights, but little effort was made to put them in force. In 1882 President Kruger, who was then bent on extending the boundaries of the Transvaal in every direction, endeavoured to make a treaty with Lobengula, but without success. The Warren expedition of 1884 to Bechuanaland (q.v.), while it checked for a time the encroachments of the Transvaal Boers, and preserved to Great Britain the highway to the north through Bechuanaland, also served to encourage colonists to speculate as to the future of the interior. At this time, too, the struggle between the nations of western Europe for the unappropriated portions of Africa had begun, and while the Boers, foiled in Matabeleland, endeavoured to get a footing in Mashonaland, both Portuguese and Germans were anxious to secure for their countries as much of this region as they could. In 1887 a map was laid before the Portuguese cortes showing the territories in Africa claimed by Portugal. They stretched across the continent from sea to sea, and included almost the whole of what is now Rhodesia, as well as the British settlements on Lake Nyasa. To the claim of a transcontinental domain Portugal had succeeded in gaining the assent of Germany and France, though Germany, which had secured a footing in south-west Africa, still dreamed of extending her sway over Matabeleland. By the instructions of Lord Salisbury, then foreign secretary, the British representative at Lisbon informed the Portuguese government that except on the seacoast and on portions of the Zambezi river there was not a sign of Portuguese authority or jurisdiction in the districts claimed by them, and that the British government could not recognize Portuguese sovereignty in territory not effectively occupied by her.
This protest, so far as southern Rhodesia is concerned, might have been ineffective save for the foresight, energy and determination of Cecil Rhodes, who had been instrumental in saving Bechuanaland from the Boers, and who as early as 1878 had conceived the idea of extending British influence over central Africa.[1] At this time gold prospecting was being feverishly undertaken all over South Africa as a result of the discoveries at Barberton and on the Rand, and Lobengula was besieged for all sorts of concessions by both Portuguese and Boers, as well as by other adventurers from all parts of the world. The country secured for Great Britain.If the country was to be secured for Britain immediate action was necessary. Sir Sidney Shippard, who had succeeded Rhodes as commissioner in Bechuanaland and who shared his views, kept up a friendly correspondence with Lobengula, while at Bulawayo Mr J. S. Moffat was British resident. At the end of 1887 Sir Sidney urged the high commissioner, Lord Rosmead (then Sir Hercules Robinson), to allow him to conclude a treaty with Lobengula, but unavailingly, until Rhodes, by taking upon himself all pecuniary responsibility, succeeded in obtaining the required sanction. On the 11th of February 1888, Moffat and Lobengula signed an agreement, whereby the Matabele ruler agreed that he would refrain from entering into any correspondence or treaty with any foreign state or power without the previous knowledge and sanction of the British high commissioner for South Africa. Shortly after the conclusion of this treaty, representatives of influential syndicates directed by Rhodes, in which Alfred Beit and C. D. Rudd were large holders, were sent, with the knowledge of the British government and the high commissioner, to negotiate with Lobengula, and on the 30th of October of the same yearhe concluded an arrangement with Messrs Rudd, Rochfort Maguire and F.R. Thomson, by which, in return for the payment of £100 a month, together with 1000 Martini-Henry rifles and 100,000 rounds of ammunition, he gave the syndicate complete control over all the metals and minerals in his kingdom, with power to exclude from his dominions “all persons seeking land, metals, minerals or mining rights therein,” in which action, if necessary, he promised to render them assistance. The position of the envoys was one of considerable danger, as Lobengula had around him many white advisers strongly antagonistic to
- ↑ See article “Bechuanaland” by Sir Henry Shippard in British Africa (London, 1899).
