British South Africa Company and Pioneer Column, 1889–1890

Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company received a royal charter in 1889 and organised an armed Pioneer Column to move north from the Cape colonies. The expedition entered Mashonaland in 1890 and established forts and administrative claims.

Company occupation relied upon contested concessions, military force and expectations of mineral wealth. It displaced African authority and prepared the conflicts that followed with Ndebele and Shona communities.

This context is appropriate for fiction about Cecil Rhodes, Leander Starr Jameson, the Pioneer Column and the commercial occupation of the territory that became Rhodesia.