Southern Rhodesia: A White Man's Country in the Tropics

Abstract

N Southern Rhodesia we have a country unique in many respects. Here is a community of white people living in the tropics and leading a life which is a compromise between that of such countries as India and a true European democracy. Climatically and politically it is a white man's country: socially it is a white aristocracy with a black proletariat. It is, of course, not altogether a new experiment in social evolution, since similar problems are encountered in South Africa; but contrasts are more pronounced in Rhodesia because the evolution of both white and black society has been comparatively much more rapid. We have covered, thanks to railways and telegraphs, more history in thirty years than the Cape covered in two hundred. Our white people have passed in a few years from the pioneer stage with its roughness and hardships to the era of up-to-date hotels and motor cars.