The British South Africa Company was formed by Cecil Rhodes and the financier Alfred Beit on the model of the British East India Company. It's aim was the economic exploitation of south-central Africa. It received a Royal Charter in 1889 and lost the charter in 1923 when the areas it controlled were given colonial status as Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe). The Company, like the East India Company before it, was empowered to recruit its own army, and it used this to defeat and expropriate the Matabele and the Shona in the first and second Matabele wars (1893, 1896-7).
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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "British South Africa Company established". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5476, accessed 23 November 2024.]
