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OTL, the short-lived federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland broke up in 1963. Northern Rhodesia became Zambia, Nyasaland became Malawi, and Southern Rhodesia became Rhodesia, period. Rhodesia stayed under white rule while the other two went to black-majority governments.

OTL, Southern Rhodesia was tolerably willing to let the North go; it was a thinly populated hinterland, of interest only for its rich mines. There were about 75,000 white settlers in the north, but they were only 2-3% of a population of around 3 million. Also, relatively few of them were farmers -- unlike Southern Rhodesia, the north had only a few large white-owned farms and ranches. Most of the whites were concentrated in the mining sector, and so much less tightly bound to the land.

The Rhodesians realized that white rule in a united Rhodesia would be much more difficult. Better to let the north go; the whites up there would have to manage, and if things got bad they could always pick up and move south.

Okay, give me a handwave. [handwave] Let's add another hundred thousand whites to the north. That's a stretch, but not insane; once you climb out of the sweltering valley of the Zambezi, much of Zambia has a climate that Europeans find pleasant. It's tropical, but 2/3 of the country is over 1000 meters up; nights are cool and you're well above the fever belt. We can say that the massive mineral deposits discovered in the 1920s OTL were discovered a generation earlier, bringing earlier and faster immigration. Whatever the reason, now whites are 5-7% of the population, and more of them have the kind of big farms and ranches that are so very hard to walk away from.

So in this TL, Rhodesia stays united. Little Nyasaland is released to become Malawi -- bunch of tea plantations, who cares -- but White! Rhodesia! firmly insists it has no intention of leaving the British Empire, thank you very much.

Now what?


Doug M.
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