UNDEFEATED: TACTICAL SUCCESS and POLITICAL FAILURE in the RHODESIAN WAR

Zambezia, 1983

the flurry of publications as Rhodesia became Zimbabwe

2011

The relationship between a good or bad share market on the one side and a British Colony in the stage of tender infancy on the other is to be studied, if anywhere, in this country of Rhodesia, Rhodesia is a country which,. almost avowedly is intended to be built up, or at least forced upward, by aid. of gold mining and land dealing on the £1 share limited liability principle 1 {Rhodesia Herald, 1898) The immediate genesis of colonial Zimbabwe grew out of the discovery of the main gold reef on the T-Jitwatersrand in 1886. When news of the find reached the diamond mining centre of Kimberley, reaction was mixed. Some entrepreneurs, particularly those bruised in the ongoing fight to amalgamate the diamond industry, made their way as fast as possible to the Rand. Others, with much less reason to gamble, like Cecil Rhodes, held back. Rhodes 1 scepticism, rooted in the recent failure of the Barberton goldfield and the crash of its stock exchange, was confirmed by the professional opinion of his mining expert. 'If I were to ride over these reefs in America', said Gardner Williams, 'I would not get off my horse to look at them'. 1 And when-Rhodes finally did act, his luck was as poor as the advice he had previously received Gold Fields of South Africa Limited, registered in London

1994

2008

This thesis repositions racial population issues as central to an understanding of the final decades of settler rule in Rhodesia. At the time of the disintegration of the Central African Federation, the small and transient white population of Rhodesia rested precariously atop a massive and fast-growing African population; and with high rates of white emigration and the spectre of being handed over to African majority rule, the Rhodesian regime declared their illegal independence from Britain in 1965. As several factors ripened together in the 1970s, including white Rhodesians' heightened population anxieties, the economic strains of the white 'brain drain,' and the African population 'explosion,' the demographically fragile settler state was gradually stretched to the breaking point. It was in this context that the escalation of the guerrilla war added new pressures and exacerbated pre-existing demographic strains that forced Rhodesia's final collapse in 1979...

2006

This thesis uses evidence from British and international archives to examine the events leading up to Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) on 11 November 1965 from the perspectives of Britain, the Old Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and the United States. Two underlying themes run throughout the thesis. First, it argues that although the problem of Rhodesian independence was highly complex, a UDI was by no means inevitable. There were courses of action that were dismissed or remained under explored (especially in Britain, but also in the Old Commonwealth, and the United States), which could have been pursued further and may have prevented a UDI. Second, the thesis argues there were structural weaknesses in the machinery of government of each of the major actors, but particularly in Britain. This made the management of the Rhodesian Crisis more difficult, contributed to the likelihood of a UDI, and exacerbated tension in relations between Britain and its international partners. In stressing these themes the thesis builds upon some of the earlier literature that was critical of the Labour Government’s foreign and Commonwealth policies. Although this thesis is primarily an international history, it also makes use of theories from political science and international relations to frame certain aspects of the empirical research.

"On November 11, 1965 the colony of Southern Rhodesia unilaterally and illegally declared itself independent from Britain, the first and only time that this had happened since the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. After fifteen years of international ostracism, economic sanctions, and civil war Rhodesia finally walked the path to legal independence as the state of Zimbabwe in 1980. Interdisciplinary in its scope and international in its coverage, this book analyzes the weaknesses in Britain's Rhodesian policy in the 1960s and the strains that Rhodesia's UDI imposed on Britain's relations with the Commonwealth, the United States and the United Nations. Advance praise for Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence: An International History “Carl Peter Watts has written a comprehensive and definitive history of Rhodesia’s path of rebellion. His use of material from several archives has resulted in new knowledge and new nuances of understanding that transform our views of what happened in the last white colony of Africa.”—Stephen Chan, Professor of International Relations, School of Oriental and African Studies “Carl Peter Watts has written a remarkably wide-ranging and lively analysis of the international repercussions of Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence in the mid-1960s. Drawing on archives from a number of countries and applying international relations theories as well as a sound historical grasp, he questions a number of assumptions about the crisis, arguing that UDI could have been avoided and that, once it took place, the British government could have ended it by using military force.”—John Young, Professor of International History, University of Nottingham “By placing the Rhodesian crisis in a genuinely international perspective, Carl Peter Watts offers important new insights into one of the most intractable problems thrown up by the process of decolonization. This rigorously researched and thought-provoking study should be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why the issue proved so difficult to resolve.”—Philip Murphy, Professor and Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London"

My paper explores the competing ideological and pragmatic determinants that shaped White House policy towards white minority ruled Rhodesia during the 1970s.

Africa Spectrum, 2016

Review of the monograph: Luise White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015, ISBN 9780226235196 (paperback), xvi+343 pp.

African Identities, 2019

The following paper aims at highlighting how race and law influenced activities between Europeans and Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Race and Law were crucial determinants in how activities functioned in social relations, economic activities, trade unions and political party activities, and in the education sector. It advances that the British South African Company (BSAC) and later the colonial administration used the two aspects to the advantage of the European settlers which was at the expense of the livelihoods of the inhabitants, the Africans. It goes in details by showing what laws were enacted to advance European activities, and how race was instrumental in maintaining European control of Africans in Northern Rhodesia. This paper touches on activities that took place between 1890 to 1960.

African Minds eBooks, 2022