Copperbelt Province: Difference between revisions

Hand axes and cleavers dating from the early Stone Age and found in the province demonstrate the antiquity of human settlement in the area. By ad300 inhabitants of the region were farmers who smelted iron and exploited local copper deposits. British colonial rule began in the mid-1890s when the British South Africa Company signed treaties with local chiefs. The province became part of the colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1924, and part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953. Members of the mining communities of the Copperbelt took a lead role in the political struggle that brought independence to Zambia in 1964. Population 1,428,869 (1990).