Robert Edward Codrington

Robert Edward Codrington (6 January 1869 – 16 December 1908) was the colonial Administrator of the two territories ruled by the British South Africa Company (BSAC) which became present-day Zambia. He was Administrator of North-Eastern Rhodesia, based at Fort Jameson, now Chipata, from 11 July 1898 to 24 April 1907, and then of North-Western Rhodesia, based at Livingstone from February 1908 to his death in London on 16 December 1908 from heart disease at age 39. He laid the foundation for the amalgamation of the two territories as Northern Rhodesia four years later.

His administration was influential in establishing British colonial government in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and making them different in character from white-settler-led Southern Rhodesia.

Background Codrington was born in the United Kingdom into a Gloucestershire family with a background of service in the Royal Navy, but instead he went to southern Africa and joined the Bechuanaland Border Police in 1890.

Nyasaland Codrington was then appointed Collector of Revenue in the British Central Africa Protectorate, also known as Nyasaland (later Malawi). He rose rapidly through the colonial ranks and as a result of his military experience he was given the job of conquering the Ngoni and Yao by force and stamping out the last vestiges of the slave trade in the area.

He worked closely with Alfred Sharpe, the Governor in Nyasaland, and with the latter's military assistance ensured the subjugation of the Bemba and the Kazembe-Lunda.

In 1907, Codrington was appointed Administrator of North-Western Rhodesia based at Livingstone, but only served a year before his death. In that time he reorganised its administration in a similar fashion to North-Eastern Rhodesia, paving the way for the two territories to be merged in 1911.

Ethnological collection and writing Codrington studied ethnological aspects of Africa, and collected cultural artefacts. While some of these had been taken from their rightful owners by slave traders whom he had defeated, many valuable pieces including very old works of Luba origin were taken from the court of Mwata Kazembe by the British punitive expedition sent by him against Mwata Kazembe X in 1897, and these he kept. They were placed in 1920 in a museum in Southern Rhodesia, 1000 km from their Kazembe-Lunda owners. He wrote a number of articles for the Royal Geographical Society.

Legacy

Codrington was, after Cecil Rhodes, one of the chief architects of British rule in central Africa. Although portrayed by some writers as kind and just, he was paternalistic towards Africans and uncompromising in his view of the superiority of the British. Though he had taken part in the bloody events in Matabeleland, three aspects of his later work influenced the course of history north of the Zambezi in more peaceful ways.

He encouraged African education and employed them in administration, he instigated indirect rule through local chiefs, and he opposed rule by white settlers, keeping it firmly in the hands of trained administrators. These factors helped put Zambia and Malawi on a different path from Southern Rhodesia, helping them gain peaceful independence more than fifteen years before Zimbabwe.