Archival Significance
Samkange was a founding figure of Zimbabwean nationalist historiography and the first prominent Black Zimbabwean historian to publish a major English-language account of the 1889-90 BSAC invasion of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. The book is a deliberate counter-narrative to the settler historiography dominant at the time.
Institutional Context
Published by Heinemann’s education list in 1968, a period when very few Black-authored histories of the BSAC occupation existed in general circulation. Samkange, son of nationalist clergyman Thompson Samkange, wrote from within the liberation movement’s intellectual circle.
Content Summary
Traces the negotiations, concessions, and manoeuvring, the Rudd Concession, Rhodes’s chartered company, the roles of Lobengula, Jameson, and the British Colonial Office, that produced the colony of Rhodesia between 1887 and 1890, drawing on documentary and oral sources gathered in Rhodesia, Britain, and the United States.
Research Utility
A foundational text for any study of Zimbabwean nationalist historiography and for comparing Black and settler accounts of the same founding events, frequently cited alongside Samkange’s later On Trial for My Country.
Abantu Archives Note
Held in-house.