ABSTRACT
Zimbabwe is the latest African country to join the world stage of independent sovereign states, but its birth-pangs started over a century before. The first Chimurenga or revolt in 1896 against white settlers is often used as a convenient way of dating the modern nationalist movement and sense of statehood, although there were great nation states in the region as early as the thirteenth century. The greatest was Great Zimbabwe, which reached the height of its influence before the end of the fifteenth century. Its surviving buildings are the largest ancient stone buildings in black Africa. The pre-capitalist Shona civilisation was violently disturbed in the nineteenth century by the advent of white settlers from South Africa, who were initially lured to the area by the dream of large gold deposits. This failed to materialise in any sizeable way, but the settler communities had, by the beginning of the twentieth century, already discovered the region’s considerable agricultural potential. In the 1930s iron and steel works were started, rapid expansion in the commercial, agricultural and industrial sectors took place after 1945, but it was the manufacturing sector that was to prove the most successful developer.
