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This article details how and why officials in the United States and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland developed policies and initiatives to promote US capital investments. It analyzes these policies in the context of decolonization, white minority rule, and the Cold War in Africa. It further shows how US business interests, especially in the mining industry, increased their investments and influenced policy. Drawing from Zimbabwean archives, it argues that these competing priorities produced inconsistent results that tended to support US imperialism and hinder nationalist movements in British Central Africa.

Summary

At the beginning of the twentieth century the main engine of change in Central Africa was the British South Africa Company, founded by Cecil Rhodes. In 1889 it had received from the British government a charter to exercise powers of administration in the region. The birth of the new economy was associated with the emergence of new forms of racial and social division. For the infant settler communities, racial dominance was as much a matter of economic necessity as of cultural preference. The intensity and persistence of the First World War affected families far from the battle-front. As the price of imported goods became prohibitive, bark cloth replaced mass-produced textiles in many homes and locally smelted hoes reappeared. In the decade before 1923 the main issue of white politics in the Rhodesias was the creation of a new form of government to replace chartered company rule.

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The Political Economy of American Businesses in British Central Africa, 1953–1963

12 - British Central Africa

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The Political Economy of American Businesses in British Central Africa, 1953–1963

12 - British Central Africa

Summary