The British South Africa Company's administration of what became Rhodesia was chartered in 1889 by Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and began with the Pioneer Column's march north-east to Mashonaland in 1890.

Amid the Scramble for Africa during the 1880s, the South African-based businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes envisioned the annexation to the British Empire of a bloc of territory connecting the Cape of Good Hope and Cairo—respectively at the southern and northern tips of Africa—and the concurrent construction of a line of rail linking the two.

In return for these rights, the Company would govern and develop any territory it acquired, while respecting laws enacted by extant African rulers, and upholding free trade within its borders.

Portugal's colonies in Angola and Mozambique, coastal territories respectively to the west and east of this general area, were over three centuries old, and Lisbon's alliance with Britain formally dated back to the 1386 Treaty of Windsor.

He thought this might make an ideal sea outlet for his proposed settlement in Mashonaland, the area directly to Matabeleland's north-east where Lobengula held dominion over many Mashona chiefs.

The British government issued a firm ultimatum against the Portuguese claims in January 1890; Lisbon swiftly acquiesced and left the area open for the Company's drive north.

In return, the Company gave Mtassa rifles and other equipment (worth £100 in total), and a promise of protection against attacks by the Portuguese or the neighbouring Shangaan (or Tsonga) people.

[11] Captain Patrick Forbes rode to Mtassa's aid from Salisbury, quickly routed the Portuguese, and thereupon advanced all the way to Beira, securing further concessions from local chiefs along the way to build a railroad.

Tense negotiations between Britain and Portugal followed, finally concluding with a treaty signed in Lisbon on 11 June 1891: prominent among the numerous territorial revisions was the integration of Manicaland into the Company domain as part of Mashonaland.

Britain concurrently recognised Portugal's authority over the entire Mozambican coast, putting an end to Rhodes's designs for a Company port on the Mozambique Channel.

"[16] The efforts of Thomson and Alfred Sharpe to secure a Company concession over the area were furiously rebuffed by Msiri in late 1890, and ultimately foiled by the 1891–92 Stairs Expedition—a multinational force in Leopold's service, led by a Canadian British Army officer, Captain William Grant Stairs—which violently clashed with the obstreperous Msiri, and eventually shot him dead when an attempt to arrest him turned into a firefight.

[19] The Company moved on Lobengula during October and early November 1893, and used the inexorable firepower of its Maxim machine guns to crush attacks by the far larger Matabele army as it rode south-west.

[n 3] Company troops were despatched to bring him back, and the resultant pursuit north ended with the ambush and annihilation of the 34-man Shangani Patrol by the remnants of Lobengula's army on 4 December 1893.

Mlimo convinced his followers that the white man was responsible for all their ills—hut tax, forced work, locusts, rinderpest, drought and so on—and that he and other tribal prophets could ensure the success of a massed rebellion by turning the settlers' bullets into water.

[n 4] At this meeting, the insurgents vehemently protested against their prior treatment under Company rule, prompting Rhodes to walk away from the other whites and to sit among the Matabele instead, apparently intending to symbolically demonstrate empathy and a spirit of reconciliation.

"It is not clear why the name should have been pronounced with the emphasis on the second rather than the first syllable," the late historian Robert Blake commented, "but this appears to have been the custom from the beginning and it never changed.

In Southern Rhodesia, a ten-man Legislative Council first sat in 1899, originally made up of the administrator himself, five other members nominated by the Company, and four elected by registered voters.

These respective arteries of transport and communication, vital both for the successful development of the new country and for the realisation of Rhodes's Cape to Cairo dream, were laid across the previously bare Rhodesian landscape with great speed.

The new hut taxes concurrently compelled black peasants to find paid work, which could be found in the new agricultural industry,[38] though most tribesmen were reluctant to abandon their traditional lifestyles in favour of the capitalist labour market.

Holding considerable political and economic power up to the end of Company rule in 1923, the Southern Rhodesian tobacco industry retained its prominent position for decades afterwards.

The economic slump in the Cape following the Second Boer War motivated many White South Africans to move to Southern Rhodesia, and from about 1907 the Company's land settlement programme encouraged more immigrants to stay for good.

With its size regularly fluctuating, it and other more irregular units—prominently the Bulawayo Field Force, including figures such as Selous and Burnham as commanders—proceeded to play a central role in the two Matabele Wars of the 1890s.

The word "Rhodesia" was omitted at the insistence of the British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, because Britain did not yet formally consider that the country's name, despite the Company's official adoption of it the year before.

They were held in high regard by their white officers for their formidable soldiering ability, but they became hugely unpopular among the black civilian population for their perceived arrogance and abuse of the law they were supposed to uphold.

[48] At the 1896 indaba with Rhodes in the Matopos Hills, the Matabele chief Somabhulana complained at length about the native police, saying they did not respect the traditional tribal structure and generally oppressed the populace, reportedly raping women on a regular basis.

[45] The BSAP thereafter operated alongside the Southern Rhodesian Constabulary (SRC), a town police force covering Salisbury, Bulawayo, Fort Victoria, Gwelo and Umtali.

[54] Rhodesia contributed part of the British garrison at the Battle of the Elands River in August 1900, during which a 500-man force made up principally of Australians and Rhodesians held off attacks from a far larger Boer army under General Koos de la Rey, and repeatedly refused offers of safe passage in return for surrender.

[58] Following the end of the South-West African Campaign in 1915, the 1st Rhodesia Regiment was dissolved; most of its men travelled to England to volunteer for the Western Front,[59] while others joined the 2nd in East Africa.

This party sought self-government for Southern Rhodesia within the Empire, just as Britain had previously granted "responsible government" to its colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa as a precursor to full dominion status.

The Company would concurrently keep the country's mineral rights, extensive tracts of freehold property, and half the proceeds from future sales of land in what had been North-Western Rhodesia.