Coloureds’ Status in Northern Rhodesia

Abstract

In the years following the East Africa Governors’ Conference in Nairobi in 1933, the questions surrounding half-castes’ status in the British Empire in East and Central Africa remained largely unresolved. Periodically, officials in Britain’s African colonies and dependencies, and in London, returned to the question about half-castes’ status in British Imperial Africa. Nonetheless, one of the outcomes of the transnational debates centering on half-castes’ status in British imperial Africa was closer working collaborations between the British administrations in Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. British officials in these three territories kept a watchful eye on developments in each other’s countries in reference to their half-caste and Coloured populations. In the ensuing years, the Northern Rhodesian government on numerous occasions wrote to the Southern Rhodesian and Nyasaland colonial administrations requesting updates on their respective territories’ administrative policies and practices in relation to half-castes and Coloureds. Likewise, the local colonial administration in Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland wrote to the Northern Rhodesian government requesting information about Northern Rhodesia’s official position on its half-caste and Coloured population. All this networking between British officials in Central British African territories was in order for the British administration in these three territories to “harmonize” (as one official stated to his colleague in a neighboring territory) their government’s policies in relation to half-castes and Coloureds.