The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1953–1963: A Retrospective at its Unattained Platinum Jubilee

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Notes

1 The most recent overview of the Federation is provided by A. Cohen, ‘The Central African Federation’, in T. Spear, ed., Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 31 August 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.421, accessed 30 March 2023.

2 P. Keatley, The Politics of Partnership: The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 366.

3 H. Franklin, Unholy Wedlock: The Failure of the Central African Federation (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), 160; B. Marmon, ‘“Bogey Bogey Stuff”: Gold Coastism, Federation, and White Backlash in Southern Rhodesia, 1951–56’, Round Table, 111, 2 (2022), 214–226.

4 A. Shutt and T. King, ‘Imperial Rhodesians: The 1953 Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in Southern Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31, 2 (2005), 357–379.

5 W. Beinart, ‘Cecil Rhodes: Racial Segregation in the Cape Colony and Violence in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 48, 3 (2022), 584; P. Mason, ‘Masters of Partners? Race Relations in the African Federation’, Foreign Affairs, 35, 3 (1957), 501.

6 T.R.M. Creighton, Anatomy of Partnership: Southern Rhodesia and the Central African Federation (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), 103.

7 K. Law, Gendering the Settler State: White Women, Race, Liberalism and Empire in Rhodesia, 1950–1980 (New York: Routledge, 2016), 3.

8 In passim: H. Holderness, Lost Chance: Southern Rhodesia, 1945–1958 (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1985); D.M. Mitchell, An African Memoir: White Woman, Black Nationalists (n.p.: Diana Mitchell, 2021).

9 Similar British colonial entities established around this time were the West Indies Federation and the Malaya Federation.

10 L. White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 8.

11 J.J.B. Somerville, ‘The Central African Federation’, International Affairs, 39, 3 (1963), 391.

12 Ibid.

13 N. Sithole, African Nationalism (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1959), 125.

14 K. Kaunda, Zambia Shall Be Free (London: Heinemann, 1962), 86.

15 G. van Eeden, The Crime of Being White (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel, 1965), 36.

16 G. Rennie, ‘The First Year of Federation’, African Affairs, 54, 214 (1955), 18–19.

17 G. Macola, ‘Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, UNIP and the Roots of Authoritarianism in Nationalist Zambia’, in J.-B. Gewald, M. Hinfelaar, and G. Macola, eds., One Zambia, Many Histories: Towards a History of Post-Colonial Zambia (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 20.

18 J. McCracken, A History of Malawi 1859–1966 (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2012), 337.

19 C. Richardson, ‘Moment of Truth in Central Africa’, Africa Today, 6, 2 (1959), 9–10; B. Marmon, ‘Settler Worldmaking: Reconfiguring the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953–62’, Itinerario, (2022), 7, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115322000201.

20 B. Marmon, ‘Neutrality of a Special Type: George Loft’s Abortive Racial Reconciliation in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1957–1960’, Safundi, 22, 4 (2021), 426–429.

21 J. Darwin, ‘The Central African Emergency, 1959’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21, 3 (1993), 217–234.

22 ‘The Monckton Report: African Awakening in the Federation’, Round Table, 51, 201 (1960), 22–28.

23 P. Docking, Negotiating the End of the British Empire in Africa, 1959–1964 (Cham: Springer, 2021), 187–193.

24 ‘Boycott by the Right’, Rhodesia Herald, 14 March 1962.

25 F.M.G. Wilson, ‘The Rhodesias and Nyasaland’, Current History, 46, 271 (1964), 153.

26 T. Ranger, ‘Afterword’, Critical African Studies, 4, 6 (2011), 115.

27 T. Mboya, Freedom and After (London: Andre Deutsch, 1963), 216–217; B. Marmon, ‘Independence and Pan-African Diplomatic Contestation: Anti-Colonial Nationalism and the Eclipse of White Legitimacy in “British Central Africa”, 1957–64’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 51, 2 (2023), 398.

28 M.W.K. Chiume, Kwacha: An Autobiography (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1975), 207.

29 L.H. Gann and M. Gelfand, Huggins of Rhodesia (London: Allen & Unwin, 1964); R. Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days (London: Collins, 1964).

30 C. Alport, The Sudden Assignment (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965).

31 C. Dunn, Central African Witness (London: Gollancz, 1959); C. Sanger, Central African Emergency (London: Heinemann, 1960).

32 P. Gifford, ‘Misconceived Dominion: The Creation and Disintegration of the Federation of British Central Africa', in P. Gifford and W.R. Louis, eds., Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization, 1940–1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 387–416; R. Hyam, ‘The Geopolitical Origins of the Central African Federation: Britain, Rhodesia and South Africa, 1948–1953’, Historical Journal, 30, 1 (1987), 145–172; J.R.T. Wood, The Welensky Papers: A History of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Durban: Graham Publishing, 1983).

33 A.S. Kamba and P.C. Mazikana, ‘Archive Repatriation in Southern Africa’, Information Development, 4, 2 (1988), 80.

34 An exception is A. King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation: The Policy of Partnership in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–62’ (PhD thesis, University of Oxford, Oxford, 2001).

35 R. Power, ‘The African Dimension to the Anti-Federation Struggle, ca. 1950–53: “It Has United Us Far More Closely than Any Other Question Would Have Accomplished”,’ Itinerario, 45, 2 (2021), 304–324; A. Cohen, The Politics and Economics of Decolonization in Africa: The Failed Experiment of the Central African Federation (London: IB Tauris, 2017); P. Murphy, ed., Central Africa, Parts I & II (London: TSO, 2005).

36 M. Collins, ‘Decolonisation and the “Federal Moment”’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 24, 1 (2013), 21–40; M. Fejzula, ‘The Cosmopolitan Historiography of Twentieth-Century Federalism’, Historical Journal, 64, 2 (2021), 477–500.

37 National Archives of Zimbabwe, F209/C/204/02, ‘Federal Representation at International Conferences’, undated. The quote is from a memo by an anonymous bureaucrat in the Federation’s Ministry of External Affairs.

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Brooks Marmon

Brooks Marmon is a postdoctoral scholar at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Ohio State University, and a research associate at the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on pan-African diplomacy and anti-colonial liberation struggles in southern Africa, especially Zimbabwe.