Zimbabwe was colonized in 1890s by the British South Africa Company. The decided name, Rhodesia, came from colonist Cecil Rhodes. At the time, Rhodes was serving as the prime minister of the Port Colony in South Africa. Rhodes was a fierce believer in British imperialism, so when the opportunity presented itself, Rhodes got the go-ahead from the government back in the United Kingdom to go with a group and the British South Africa Police and set up a company rule of sorts.

Soon after colonization, some Shona, a group of Bantu people, tried to instigate large-scale revolts but were ultimately unsuccessful. This uprising was labeled as the Second Matabele War. Originally, the fighting took place between the British South Africa Company and the Ndebele people, however, Shona people from around Rhodesia quickly joined in and took the war upon themselves. Ultimately, the Shona siege was broken by simply an overwhelming number of British forces. The unrest created by the uprisings led to uneven land redistribution with European settles receiving the lion’s share of land and African’s being relocated and left with next to nothing.

In 1923, Britain decided to annex Southern Rhodesia, which subsequently led to Southern Rhodesia becoming its own self-governing annexed colony. For the next thirty or so years, things in Zimbabwe got along just fine, until in 1953, against wishes of Africans, British combined Rhodesia with Nyasaland to form the Central African Federation. Overwhelming disagreement and tension between the nations eventually led to the newly combined countries being split up into three parts in 1963.