I love sharing information about African countries prior to colonialism. As one might imagine, when researching, I almost exclusively encounter an African nation’s history beginning with European colonialism. This further exacerbated the notion that Africa had no history prior to the ‘civilized’ Europeans invasion of the continent.
When studying history, it’s wise to take a look at timelines. They are a great tool to not only understand the subject at hand, but also in providing a plethora of new subjects to research.
Below is the timeline for Zimbabwe up until colonialism. There are huge spaces of time missing in this timeline. We know, through archaeological evidence, people occupied this territory at least since 18000 BC. However, studies are not available of more detailed stories of Zimbabwean history until 1450.
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18000BC Caves in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe were decorated with paintings.
1100-1400 Era of Great Zimbabwe and the Shona trading empire.
1200-1450 As many as 18,000 people in the iron-age center of Great Zimbabwe.
c1450-1500 Nyatsimba, Mwene Matapa, or Monomotapa (Lord of the Plundered People or Ravager of the Lands) is Chief of the Zimbabwe Empire. He conquered the middle Zambezi Valley and built stone citadels at Great Zimbabwe. He was known to have a corps of over 100 female bodyguards.
1820-1829 Renegade Zulus rebelled against King Shaka, but were crushed. Descendents of the renegade Zulus are of the Ndebeles tribe, which forms a 5th of Zimbabwe’s 11 million people, the majority of which are of the Shona tribe.
1881 King Lobengula left an encampment to regroup his "induna" warriors as colonial forces advanced toward it. In 1993 Lobengula's tribal capital was rebuilt as a symbolic national monument near the second city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and became a center of academic and historical studies. In 2010 a bush fire destroyed the historic site.
1889 Oct 29, Cecil Rhodes used an agreement with the king of the Ndebele, Lobengula, as the legal basis to found a chartered company, the British South Africa Company in Zimbabwe. The company was roughly modeled on the old East India Company and its powers included the rights to annex and administer land, raise its own police force and to establish settlements within its own boundaries.
1889 Cecil Rhodes and his cronies conned King Lobengula into signing away his powers over the Ndebele kingdom in Zimbabwe. Lobengula’s father, Mzilikazi, founded the Ndebele nation and was buried in the Matopos Hills.
1890-1899 British settlers led by Cecil Rhodes marched north from South Africa and appropriated vast stretches of arable land in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The Shangaani people, a hunting tribe, were gradually forced to become poachers after the British took control.
1896 Cecil Rhodes rode unarmed into the Matopos Hills area of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the midst of an Ndebele uprising to negotiate peace. He told the Ndebele chiefs that he wanted to be buried there and asked them to guard his grave.
1897 Mbuya Nehanda, a spirit medium of the Zezuru Shona people, was executed for the killing of administrator Henry Pollard, known for his brutality toward blacks. She provided inspiration to the Hwata Dynasty for their revolt against the British South Africa Company colonization of Mashonaland and Matabeleland (later Zimbabwe). She is believed to have had immense powers and was later remembered as the ancestral grandmother of the Zimbabwe nation.
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