The early years of name was given to the Com pany's territories by proclamation of May 3, 1895—were arduous Southern Rhodesia (152,000 sq.m.). Northern Rhodesia (29o,000 sq.m.) is treated subsequently.
and eventful. The 1,500 settlers, Rhodes told the shareholders at their annual meeting on Nov. 29, 1892, "went to work to find their reefs, but they were removed 1,700 miles from the coast, and their food cost them £70 a ton." To provide means of transport and communication was the first duty of the Company, and Rhodes set about it at once. The work was interrupted three times; by the Matabele war in 1893, by the Jameson Raid and the subsequent native insurrection in 1896, and by the great South African war of 1899-1902. The most serious of these interruptions was the second. On Jan. 6, 1896, Rhodes resigned his premiership of the Cape Colony on account of his complicity in the raid, and went to London to see the colonial secretary (Joseph Chamberlain) and do what he could for Jameson and the other raiders, who were being sent home for trial. While there the news of the native insurrection reached him, and he hastened to Rhodesia, travelling by the Suez Canal to Beira. By the help of the railway then being made he got to Salis bury in time to join the column which set out on April 18 for the relief of Bulawayo, where the settlers had just gone into laager with 10,000 Matabele rebels on the hills around. It was then that, at the risk of his life, in the Matopo hills he won the Matabele indunas to a prompt submission, and drove the railway up from Palapye 229 miles to Bulawayo, in the amazingly short time of five months. The settlers increased in numbers, industries were established, public offices, law-courts, churches, schools and hos pitals were built, the administration became more efficient, and by 1905 Rhodesia had "turned the corner." In that year with a gold export of £1,500,000, she took her place among the gold producing countries of the empire; and in that year the first train steamed slowly across the majestic span of the Victoria Falls bridge. Bulawayo, Gwelo, Salisbury, and Umtali were all con nected by rail with each other and with both Beira and Cape Town; and the main trunk line was starting from Livingstone just across the Zambezi, on its way through Northern Rhodesia to join, ten years later, the railways of the Belgian Congo.
There was no rapid increase of the European population. Between 1904 and 1911 it rose from 12,506 to 23,606; and at the close of the Company's rule it was returned, by the census of 1921, as 33,26o. There is a reason for its relatively slow growth. In Rhodesia, as in South Africa, manual labour was provided, broadly speaking, by the 500,000 native Africans already in the country, and there was, therefore, no room for British emigrants of the wage-earning, and most numerous class, from which the North American and Australasian colonies received their great accessions of population in the 19th century. But the character of this European population is correspondingly high. Its propor tion of well-educated and well-bred immigrants is unusually large. It is go British ; and, unlike the Union of South Africa, Rhodesia is free from the bilingual incubus, with its double notices and mediums of instruction, and its frequent incitements to social and political dissension. Industry, on the other hand, showed a high rate of progress. Rhodes recognized from the first that the mineral production must be supplemented by the more permanent resources of agriculture and stock-raising. And after his death (1902) the Company, so soon as the economic disturb ances caused by the South African war had passed, endeavoured to administer the colony in this, and other respects, on the lines he had laid down. In 1907 Jameson, then prime minister of the Cape Colony, and other directors of the company, visited Rho desia to investigate the grievances of the settlers and devise measures for increasing production. As the result, the acquisition of agricultural land was made easier and less costly, and govern ment advice and assistance was given to farmers, cattle-ranchers, and planters. In particular the cultivation of tobacco was pro moted, and in 1911 the value of the export was £34,810. At the same time the development of the mineral wealth of the country continued, and the gold export of 1909, £2,623,708 in value, placed the colony fourth among the gold-producing countries of the empire. During the World War although Rho desia contributed its full quota to the British armies, the produc tion of copper and other base-metals, as well as that of maize and chilled meat, was actually increased.