Rhodesia (region)

Rhodesia, known initially as Zambesia,[1] is a historical region in southern Africa whose formal boundaries evolved between the 1890s and 1980.

The term "Rhodesia" was first used to refer to the region by European settlers in the 1890s who informally named their new home after Cecil Rhodes, the company's founder and managing director.

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

Annual holidays marked various aspects of the arrival of white people to the region during the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the respective unilateral declarations of independence (1965) and of republican government (1970).

A number of Christian holidays were also observed according to custom, in the traditional British manner, and referred to in official documents by name—Christmas Day, for example, or Easter Monday.

"Rhodesia", depicted in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica , showing North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia —amalgamated that same year into Northern Rhodesia (Zambia since 1964)—and Southern Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe in 1980)