Cecil Rhodes had made a fortune in South African mining and dreamed of extending the British Empire northward from the Cape to Cairo. But his focus and his money were concentrated south of the Zambezi, in Mashonaland. When the expected wealth of Mashonaland failed to materialize, little capital remained for the territory to the north, which Rhodes wanted held as cheaply as possible. Rather than sending settlers, he financed British expeditions to bring the region into the empire's sphere of influence. Joseph Thomson and Alfred Sharpe made treaties with chiefs west of Nyasaland. The Paris Evangelical Missionary Society's Francois Coillard helped broker access to Barotseland. By a patchwork of concessions and bilateral treaties with Portugal, Germany, and the Congo Free State between 1890 and 1910, the boundaries of what would become Northern Rhodesia were roughly fixed -- though the people living within those boundaries had little say in where the lines fell.

Before 1911, the region was administered as two separate protectorates: Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia, both under the British South Africa Company. The company's administrator held powers similar to a colonial governor, but there was no elected representation. An Advisory Council consisted entirely of nominees until 1917, when a few Europeans were added. Hut tax, introduced between 1901 and 1913, was set at roughly two months' wages -- enough to force African men into the wage labor system. In 1920, the tax rate was sharply increased, often doubled, to supply workers for the Southern Rhodesian coal mines at Wankie. The company viewed Northern Rhodesia's principal economic value not as a territory to develop but as a reservoir of labor to be drawn upon by its southern neighbor. In 1895, American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, sent by Rhodes to survey the region, noticed copper deposits along the Kafue River -- a discovery whose significance would not be realized for another three decades.

Large-scale mining on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt began after 1924, when rich copper sulphide ores were found roughly 100 feet below the surface near Bwana Mkubwa. American and South African capital poured in. Chester Beatty developed the Roan Antelope mine at Luanshya in 1926 and formed Rhodesian Selection Trust. Anglo American Corporation took control of the Nkana mine at Kitwe. By the end of the 1930s, copper was booming -- but the workers who extracted it saw little benefit. African miners at Mufulira, Nkana, and Roan Antelope struck in May 1935 after a retroactive tax increase was announced with minimal notice. British South Africa Police from Southern Rhodesia were sent to suppress the action. At Luanshya, when police tried to disperse a group of strikers, six Africans were shot dead. A second strike in 1940, sparked after European miners won pay increases that were denied to their African counterparts, ended with troops firing on strikers, killing seventeen people.

White settlers in both Rhodesias pushed for union, believing a merged territory could achieve self-government under minority rule. The British government preferred a looser arrangement that would protect African interests in the north, and in 1953 imposed the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland over near-unanimous African opposition. Harry Nkumbula, a schoolteacher from Kitwe who had studied in London alongside Hastings Banda, warned that federation would extend Southern Rhodesian racial discrimination northward. His fears proved justified: the Federal government quickly tried to take control of African affairs from the Colonial Office and scaled back development proposals. Kenneth Kaunda, who became Organizing Secretary for the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress in 1951, escalated the resistance through boycotts, sit-ins, and civil disobedience. Both men were imprisoned in 1955. When Kaunda broke away to form the Zambia African National Congress in 1958, and was arrested again in 1959 during a declared State of Emergency, the era of working within the colonial system was over.

The Monckton Commission of 1960 concluded that the Federation could not be maintained except by force. Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod negotiated new constitutions, though a complicated franchise in 1962 gave Kaunda's United National Independence Party only 14 seats despite winning roughly 60 percent of valid votes. Nkumbula's smaller Congress party held the balance of power and agreed to form a coalition with Kaunda as Prime Minister. In a subsequent election in 1964 with a much wider franchise, Kaunda's party won 55 of 75 seats. The Federation was formally dissolved on 31 December 1963. On 24 October 1964, Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia with Kenneth Kaunda as its first president. In one peculiar footnote, Northern Rhodesia remains the only country to have changed its name and flag between the opening and closing ceremonies of an Olympic Games -- entering the 1964 Tokyo Olympics under one identity and leaving under another.