Rhodesia (region): Difference between revisions

When whites settled what became "Southern Rhodesia" in 1890, and when the British South Africa Company was chartered to administer "North-Western Rhodesia" and "North-Eastern Rhodesia", it was not under those names, but the names of the parts—"Mashonaland", "Matabeleland", "Barotseland", and so on. The territories were initially collectively referred to as "Zambesia" (Cecil Rhodes's preferred name), "Charterland" (Leander Starr Jameson's proposal) or "the BSAC territories". "Rhodesia" was used informally by the settlers from the start of white settlement, and was common enough usage for newspapers to start using it in articles in 1891. In 1892 it was used for the name of the first newspaper in Salisbury, ''The Rhodesia Herald]]''. The BSAC officially adopted the name "Rhodesia" in May 1895, and the British government followed in 1898. "It is not clear why the name should have been pronounced with the emphasis on the second rather than the first syllable," Robert Blake, Baron Blake comments, "but this appears to have been the custom from the beginning and it never changed."<ref name=blake114>{{cite book