How would the history of Rhodesia changed if some how there was a white majority by 1965?
Rhodesia has white majority
- Thread starter Thomasw329
- Start date
Post 1900? Only if you have a mass murdering/deportation spree that other Totalitarians would find impressive. 
This isn't the kind of scenario we should ask about. It's impossible, and horrible at any rate.
How is a white majority so horrible?
In any case, I don't see this happening without a POD way back before 1900.
Come on, so what of millions of natives are displaced or killed white people are always awesome at nation building in such circumstances.
Yeah, why is displacing and destroying the livelyhood of millions of locals so horrible?
"However, it should be noted that white people never amounted to more than 5.4% of the country's total population (that is, 270,000 white people divided by 5 million total population in 1970." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people_in_Zimbabwe
Absolutely no way you can get a white majority there without ethnic cleansing of staggering dimensions.
Absolutely no way you can get a white majority there without ethnic cleansing of staggering dimensions.
What about immigration, more people come to Rhodesia? More colonists in the first place. Say a flood of Portuguese from Mozambique, after 1974 or South Africans decide to head north. White majority not by violence, but just more people end up there.
Even if the entire population of Portugal moved to Rhodesia, it probably still wouldn't be white majority. Same with the entire white population of South Africa.
Some numbers for reference:
Nonwhite population of Zimbabwe today: ~13 million
Entire population of Portugal today: ~10.5 million
White population of South Africa today: ~10% of ~50 million, or 5 million.
Some numbers for reference:
Nonwhite population of Zimbabwe today: ~13 million
Entire population of Portugal today: ~10.5 million
White population of South Africa today: ~10% of ~50 million, or 5 million.
Also just thought what about a massive flood of Belgians from Congo to Rhodesia in the 50's and 60's? Angola also can come into play. For majority over 2.5 million, which really not that much.
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Yes, a PoD before 1900. In Rhodesia. Where white settlers didn't show up until about that time. Where a whole heck of a lot of people happened to live before 1900.
It's horrible, which I believe I may need to explain using simple words and as short a sentence I can use, because it involves a small settler population killing damn near everyone already there. So yes, a PoD before 1900 - one where, perhaps, Stewart Chamberlain and Francis Galton were more widely read? Or Lamarck enjoys more success? What, pray tell, is this not so horrible thing which results in everyone who lives in some fairly good agricultural land being butchered?
This is less directed to the OP and the quoted person, and more to the rest of the forum: How much wide-eyed, faux innocent, "I'm just posing an AHC which requires brutal genocide or racial slavery, certainly not proposing it myself" do the rest of us have to deal with!
Oh! Oh! Maybe Oswald Spengler's writing career begins earlier? And he has more success? Let's not put any varnish into why a huge number of people would "vanish" from southern Africa to make room for a group of people from the literal other side of the world.
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Why would white South Africans move from a country where they were almost 20 percent of the population, and still seemed firmly in control in the 1970's despite international disapproval, to one where they were only 5 percent and already subject to guerrilla war? White Rhodesians in the 1970's were moving to South Africa, not vice versa.
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I could see this with a Post-1900 PoD (and maybe move the borders towards the Atlantic a bit), but how could you do that with a post-1983 PoD? (I know there's not many people to start with, but going from about 5-6% to 50% seems like a stretch for 30 years.)
Yeah, those are plausible.
Another possibility is that South Africa never becomes a Union in 1910, and the four colonies remain separate. The Cape (if, as you say Transkei remains separate) could have a white majority or plurality. Even in today's South Africa, the Northern and Western Cape provinces are the only provinces where blacks aren't in the majority, with coloureds forming pluralities in those provinces.
It is not inherently horrible, but the only way to get that to happen in Rhodesia (as others have already pointed out) would be through ethnic cleansing (either killing or mass deportation of people).
As many as people see fit to start, really. And unless Ian or the Mods close the thread, it is something that can be discussed on this forum. Frankly, the population of Zimbabwe won`t die retroactively if threads like these are discussed on this board because the course of history remains completely unaffected by anything we write on this website.
Something to bear in mind about Rhodesia was that if you wanted to emigrate there post war you had to pay something like £4,000 IIRC for the right to do it, Rhodesia was never meant to be a settler colony but more like a giant gentlemen's club in Southern Africa. It's never going to be anything close to 50% white but if you do allow mass migration post 1920, you could have a significantly larger white population. This would mean that Rhodesia is able to prolong the Bush War well into the 1980's and perhaps it finally pAsses to majority rule at the same time as South Africa.