ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 considers the geographies of The Zambesia Exploring Company’s mining finance and its wider links to mine exploration and empire-building in early colonial Southern Rhodesia. The first section of the chapter deals with the Mineral Revolution in Southern Africa, which involved a tripartite increase in capital investments in gold, coal and diamond mining. Before discussing the varieties of concerns pertaining to the geographies of The Zambesia Exploring Company’s mining finance in early colonial Southern Rhodesia in the third section, the second section provides the historical context in which mining took place, and especially notes the pivotal role played by gold in bringing the Mineral Revolution into being. The fourth section focuses on the prospects for companies associated with gold mining in Southern Rhodesia in the early 1890s, while the final section concludes that investments in gold mining gave the ultimate impetus for the exploitation of copper resources in Northern Rhodesia and led to the subsequent developments in copper mining in Katanga.
