Zambia History

Little is known about the early history of the country we now call Zambia. Around two thousand years ago the area was occupied by hunters and gatherers who lived a nomadic lifestyle. Four hundred years later the Bantu moved into the area establishing small villages and farms and, by the 16th century, Zambia was home to a number of kingdoms including Lunda, Bemba and Chewa. By the early 19th Century Shaka, the Zulu leader, was making conquests around the south of Africa, expanding his empire. One displaced tribe fled north and in turn founded the Kololo Kingdom in what had been up until then the Lozi Kingdom of Upper Zambezi. Another tribe, the Ngoni, similarly fled Shaka's territorial ambitions and settled in east Zambia. By this time Europeans were active around Africa however, being landlocked and far from the ocean, Zambia did not have contact with them until the 18th Century.

The most noted European visit of these was when the explorer David Livingstone arrived in the area in 1851. He set up up a mission in the Kololo Kingdom, however it eventually failed after most of the missionaries died and his aim of replacing the slave trade with a cotton trade had a similar fate as no practicable trade route could be established through Mozambique. As this tax could only be paid in cash, many men were forced to work effectively as slave labourers in nearby South Africa or Zimbabwe to pay their enforced dues. Attempts at rebellion were brutally put down. By the end of the 19th Century, modern day Zambia comprised North-Western Rhodesia (mainly the old Kingdom of Lozi which had been retaken from the Kololo in the 1860s) and North-Eastern Rhodesia. They were administered as separate territories until 1911 when they amalgamated to form Northern Rhodesia. By 1923 the British Government had not renewed the British South African Company's charter to work the area (having decided that 'company rule' was no longer appropriate) and it became a British crown protectorate and two years later a legislature was formed.