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THE NORTHWARD EXPANSION
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was
a director. If the latter was to build up an independent concern or
concerns within the limits of the N'Kana Concession, it could only be
done by coming to terms with the Bwana M'Kubwa company.
Two
other points require to be stressed. The first was that administrative
control over Northern Rhodesia passed from the B.S.A. Company to the
Crown on 31 March 1924, Southern Rhodesia having been previously
annexed on 12 September 1923. The company maintained mineral rights
throughout Northern and Southern Rhodesia as well as mineral rights
over 14,000 square miles in Nyasaland. This change did not alter the
fundamental fact that Northern Rhodesia was at the time
administratively very poorly equipped for facing the emergent problems
of an 'industrial revolution'. Mining development had come, before the
'new' policy was inaugurated, practically to an end; a vast area was
primitive with a primitive population, and if it had continued to be
such, no elaborate structure of government would have been required.
The building up of adequate administrative machinery lagged behind; the
result was that it was the concession companies and the new mining
companies which followed that were called upon to carry out tasks far
outranging the merely technical operations of exploration and the
inauguration of mining and the preparation of ore for the market. This
was nothing new in the context of history of Africa south of the
Sahara; it could be paralleled from the forgotten story of copper
mining in the fifties of the nineteenth century in Namaqualand and from
the history of the early days of Kimberley and of the early gold-mining
days of the eastern Transvaal, and of the opening up of the diamond and
copper possibilities of the Belgian Congo. Nevertheless, it left its
mark in the relations between government and the mining interests on
the Copperbelt, more especially in the sphere of the labour problems,
but not in those alone.11
11 The position was summed up by Major J. Orde Browne in the Report on labour conditions in Northern Rhodesia (Colonial No. 150 of 1938):
'.
. . This history has had an appreciable effect upon the development of
the country and its government; under company rule, attention was
mainly given to Southern Rhodesia, the less attractive northern area
being left as a backward agricultural region of principal interest as a
labour-recruiting ground. Administration therefore remained elementary,
and the staff was limited; the company's officers not being
interchangeable with other colonies, there was little opening for fresh
blood or novel ideas. Crown Colony government in 1924 enlarged the
scope for officials: personnel however remained scanty, and when
important mining discoveries began to be exploited towards the end of
the last decade the administration was quite inadequate for the new
calls made upon it. An influx of several thousand Europeans, and the
building of three considerable townships, completely outdistanced
government resources, and only a skeleton staff could be provided to
deal with all this fresh enterprise. Efforts for the necessary increase
were made, but most unfortunately the depression of eight years ago
resulted in drastic
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