Seminar: Financial Imperialism and Settler Colonialism: Britain and Rhodesia, 1945-1962
This paper examines the trajectory of independence negotiations between Britain and Southern Rhodesia. Their failure resulted in the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front (RF) government on 11 November 1965. Informing these pre-1965 negotiations were opposed political positions, crucially depicted through financial power relations. Britain wanted to grant independence on the basis of majority rule, whereas the RF wanted minority rule. While both parties wanted to avoid conflict, suspicions and background activities resulted in the failure to reach a settlement. The negotiations during the period 1962 to 1965 became a site of confrontation informed by changing global financial arrangements, which had a direct impact on imperial and colonial power relations.
I am currently a PhD student at the University of the Free State supervised by Prof. Ian Phimister. He runs a programme called the International Studies Group affiliated to the Center for Africa Studies. Before joining the group, I attained my first and second degrees in African Economic History from the University of Zimbabwe where I became a teaching assistant from 2003 to 2007 and then lecturer from 2007 to 2012 before leaving to pursue PhD studies.
My ASC seminar is based on a background chapter to my PhD thesis which is titled 'Financing Rebellion: The State and the Monetary/Fiscal reconstruction in Rhodesia, 1962-1979'.
Discussant
Date, time and location
23 October 2014
15.30 - 17.00
Pieter de la Courtgebouw / Faculty of Social Sciences, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden
Room 3A06
Registration
Posted on 7 October 2014, last modified on 10 October 2014