Zambesia, that portion of the territory watered by the river Zambesi which is now under British protection. It is also becoming generally accepted as a loose definition of the country under the sway of the British South Africa Company. South Zambesia (southwards of the river) embraces Mashonaland (q.v.), Matabeleland (q.v.), a part of Manica, and the country of Khama, the Christian chief of the Bamangwatos. North Zambesia (northwards of the river) extends to Katanga, Lake Tanganyika, and its eastern boundary is the western shore of Lake Nyassa. The Shire Highlands are also within its limits. A royal charter was granted to the British South Africa Company in October 1889. Its first clause describes the principal field of the operations of the company to be the region 'lying immediately to the north of British Bechuanaland, and to the north and west of the South African Republic, and to the west of the Portuguese dominions.' The company was formed with the Dukes of Abercorn and of Fife for president and vice-president, and the Hon. Cecil J. Rhodes (q.v.), Premier of the Cape Colony, for managing director. The land which the company now governs was till recently almost a sealed book to all but the most adventurous of sportsmen, and missionaries like Moffat and Livingstone. Bulawayo, Salisbury, Victoria, and Umhali, already thriving centres of population, are now connected by Palapye and Mafeking with the telegraph system of Cape Colony. The railway from Vryburg to Bulawayo was opened in 1897, that from Beira on the Pungwe to Salisbury in 1899. But the mineral and agricultural development has been seriously retarded by the Matabele war, a terrible epidemic of rinderpest, the Jameson raid, and the Transvaal war of 1899-1901. Rhodesia (see RHODES, CECIL), North and South, is practically Zambesia without the British Central Africa protectorate. A new constitution was promulgated in 1898; there is now a resident commissioner in southern Rhodesia appointed by the Secretary of State, and executive and legislative councils.
See Mather, Zambesia (1891); Knight, Rhodesia of To-day (1893); Purvis and Biggs, South Africa (1896); also the articles AFRICA, CAPE COLONY, MATABELE, JAMESON (L. S.), NYASSALAND, and books there cited.