Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Northern Rhodesia.

  • Great Britain. Colonial Office.
Date:
[1933]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Northern Rhodesia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/52 (page 3)
    History. The little that is known of the early history of Northern Rhodesia is very fragmentary and is gleaned from the accounts of the few intrepid travellers who penetrated into this unknown territory. The curtain of obscurity lifts for a moment when we read the diaries of the Portuguese Governor of Sena, Dr. Lacerda, who led an expedition in 1798 from Tete into Kasembe’s country, close to the eastern shores of Lake Mweru. He was followed in the early 19th century by two Portuguese traders, Baptista and Jose, who brought back stories of the great interior kingdom of the Balunda, which extended from Lake Mweru to the confines of Barotseland and included the whole of the country drained by the Upper Congo and its tributaries. This kingdom is reputed to have lasted from the 16th to the 19th century. Very few historical facts are known about it, but the name of Muati Yamvo, the dynastic title of the Paramount Chief, is associated, like Mono- mot apa, with many half-legendary stories. Neither of these ex¬ peditions was of any great geographical value and it was not till 1851, when Dr. Livingstone made his great missionary journeys and travelled through Barotseland and in 1855 discovered the Victoria Falls, that the civilized world had its first authentic information of Northern Rhodesia. Other and later explorers who brought back stories of the barbarism of the natives, of the wealth of game, and of the glories of the Victoria Falls, were Serpa Pinto, Cameron, Selous, and Arnot. From the very early days when the hordes of migratory Bantu swept southward from Central and Northern Africa, Northern Rhodesia has been subject to constant invasions from stronger tribes on its borders, so much so, that the vast majority of the present native population, though of Bantu origin, is descended from men who themselves invaded this country not earlier than 1700 A.D. One or two small tribes, numbering now only a very few thousand, such as the Masubia on the Zambezi, are all that remain of the inhabi¬ tants of Northern Rhodesia prior to that date. Though the story of these invasions has passed into oblivion, their traces remain in the extraordinary number and diversity of races and of languages in the country. At the present time the population of the territory has been classified into seventy-three different tribes, the most important of which are the Wemba, Ngoni, Chewa, and Wisa in the north¬ eastern districts, the Rozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lenje, and Ila in the north-western districts, and the Senga, Lala, and Lunda, members of which are resident in both the eastern and western areas. There are some thirty different dialects in use, but many of them vary so slightly that a knowledge of six of the principal languages will enable a person to converse with every native in the country. Chinyanja is in use as the official language of the police and is probably the language most generally spoken by Europeans; it is 25376 A 2