Imagining Africans through the lens of a classical education: The politics of colonial administration in Southern Rhodesia : Chapter 3

Abstract

This chapter explores the varied socio-religious, linguistic, legal and historical classical motifs that manifested themselves in the colonial politics of the then Southern Rhodesia during the 1920s. The emphasis here is on exploring the application by the British colonial politics of Southern Rhodesia of the makeshift Roman administrative policy to which ancient Britons and other non-Romans were exposed in ancient times, as the colonisers understood this to comprise. This chapter is particularly interested in the political dimension of colonialism within the southern African context. Entry points such as social ethnographic theory, popular fiction, anthropology, racism or the pedagogical aspects of classical antiquity as introduced into Southern Rhodesia, and Africa at large, have been explored by other scholars.