Staking Their Claim: White Settlement at Victoria Falls

Abstract

The five years before and after the turn of the twentieth century marked a period of excitement and trepidation for Africans and Europeans living in newly formed North Western Rhodesia. Expectations ran high as people imagined the possibilities of life in the colony, but there was also anxiety as Africans and Europeans had increasingly frequent interactions with one another and with the colonial state run by the British South Africa Company. This chapter examines the fluidity of the embryonic colonial state and the optimism many of its inhabitants felt in those early years of colonial rule. This was a moment when the transforming political and social landscape provided individuals and communities the opportunity to experiment with and define the world in which they lived. State control was at a minimum and, for a time, Lewanika, white settlers, and African migrants enjoyed some benefits of living in such an open space. They were limited only by their imagination, and this frontier space with Victoria Falls as a focal point inspired white settlers and African migrants to set high expectations for themselves and North Western Rhodesia.