On 1 April 1924, the British South Africa Company, after 34 years of Royal Charter, handed over Zambia to the British Colonial Office. By the time of the handover, almost the entire African population within territorial boundaries was effectively subordinated to the autocratic rule of the company and new colonial state had emerged. More significantly, the 34 years of BSA Company rule saw the transformation of Zambia into a reservoir of cheap African labour by its linkage to the emerging regional capitalist economy based in South Africa and Zimbabwe.  As its linkage grew so too did the grip of the BSA Company on the peoplesí lives and on the future of the country and people. This was the crucial formative period in the countryís history. Some of the basic and enduring colonial and post-colonial problems may be found in this period. In addition to lying the foundation for a colonial political economy, the BSA Company period saw the entrenchment of racial and ethnic or ëtribalí stereotypes. One of the many distinctions was which company official, as well as well as hunters, traders and farmers, observed was the existence of ëstronger tribesí and ëweaker tribesí among the African people they encountered.   Some African people such as the Bemba, Ngoni and Lozi, were initially viewed and treated a ëstronger tribesí and considered as possessing attributes suitable for arduous policing, military, farming and manning work. Other, among them the Lunda, Luvale, Twa, Lamba, to mention only a few were perceived and treated as ëweaker tribesí needing constant supervision and to be consigned to non-arduous work.  The Lama-speaking people, for example, who occupied the mining area of the future copper belt, were singled out not only as ëweakí, but as having a propensity to domestic work, hawking of petty commodities, beer brewing, drug peddling, prostitution, and above all, as ëindolent and timidí.   Such ethnic perceptions or stereotypes lived on and did have an impact on the socio-economic character of colonial and post-colonial Zambia. The question must be asked and answered as to the basis of this in the emergent colonial state and economy.

Era of crisis and Collapse of Mercantilism

At the run of the nineteenth century the quickening decline of the mercantile capitalism, which had taken the form of slave and ivory trading, and its gradual replacement by industrial capitalism led by the mining revolution in Southern Africa, affected badly those peoples and pre-colonial states which depend on it.   People who occupied areas on the fringes of militarised and centralized Bemba, Ngoni, Lunda, Lozi and other such states, erected well-stockaded villages that offered protection from slave traders and ivory hunters. Outside the relative safety of these fortified villages, the Lamba and other people on the periphery lived in constant danger of attacks. The insecurity and disruption of the 1890s was in sharp contrast to the conditions of stability and prosperity reported by Dr. Francisco Jose Maria de Lacreda earlier in some of these areas.  As Joseph Thomson saw, by 1892 once relatively thriving communities had been destroyed by the ëghastlyí work carried on by men with European blood in their veins; which has spread death and desolation over many thousand rulers of the Zambezi Basiní.

To bolster their sagging authority, the company administrators even encouraged chiefs to believe that amalgamated villages would be like chiefdoms where chiefs would rule undisturbed.  In reality, however, chiefs were manipulated by a system of financial subsidies given to them for assisting labour recruiters and tax collectors. After the war, it was clearly discernible that the relative autonomy enjoyed by chiefs in the past was on the way out, They were now servants of the state. In 1921, perhaps reflecting the altered conditions, chief Mpezeni lamented that ë my subsidy is only Pounds 1.17s. 0d. We always help the Boma and especial during the war. We were promised higher subsidies after the warí. 73
 The desperation of some chiefs, who were better placed than the masses of people to benefit materially from the BSA Company, symbolised the deepening crisis in the countryside. Most of the chiefs were just as impoverished as the people they were supposed to lead. They could no longer call upon their people to work on gardens or other chores. With the loss of chiefly property, the chiefs also lost their social status. As one alarmed company official reported, on the situation in Lundazi District:
 

The chiefs in this district do not own livestock and their subsidies are practically their only emoluments. These subsidies are not to be compared with the wages of the houseboysÖThe position can be best summed up as many penalties, little or, no privileges (1)

Impoverished, and faced with the task of implementing unpopular policies, some of the chiefs simply resigned, while others were disposed for failure to perform their functions. Furthermore, eligible men among hereditary chiefs were declining in numbers, making it very difficult to replace the dead or old chiefs.
 The declining number of hereditary rulers was not only caused by the prevailing death rates but also by the fact that some of the members of the ruling families were joining labour migration. Younger members of the hereditary class were not exempted from paying taxes and thus found themselves with masses of the people waging labour.(2)  In order to reverse this trend, the BSA Company suggested the possibility of pensioning off reliable messengers, and converting them to District Capitaos (overseas) who carried the status of chiefs.
 

To sum up, the era of the BSA Company administration saw the development of ethic stereotyping which at appropriate times could be used to justify Company behaviors and actions relating to Africa governance. Specifically, stereotyping could rationalize state use of violence in tax collection, labour recruitment and in the choice of early soldiers and policemen. The transformation of some chief into wage labourers, and the accompanying state violence and ethnic stereotyping, were a manifestation of the subjugation and subordination of the countryside by the advancing forces of late nineteenth century capitalism through the British South Africa Company.
 
 

Already evident before 1914, this process was speeded up by the First World War, which made it irresistible. Development and growth of the country outside colonial capitalism was now impossible. The exchange between Chief Nsokolo and the BSA Company District Officer, Coxhead, in 1921 underscored this change. In response to Chief Nsokoloís complaint that his country was being laid waste by labour migration, Coxhead retorted:
 

 To prevent a man living where he wishes is interfering with personal liberty. Men naturally tend to settle where they find condition easy and life comfortable. This is game world over and cannot be helped. (3)

Indeed, in the postwar situation, Zambians deserting wage employment found it increasingly difficult to re-submerge them in the countryside without being detected by the BSA Company. Moreover, most of the countryside was now poverty-stricken, diseased and depleted of male labour, with children, women, the old and handicapped remaining behind to scrape a bare subsistence. On assuming control from the BSA Company in 1924, the new British governor, H.J. Stanley, that the country he was handed over was, in his words, one where:
 

Women and children whom the (the migrant workers) should be looking after are left behind to their moral and physical deterioration. In numerous villages there are no people save the elderly and the women and children and the whole fabric of native life with tribal control for bond and the village for focus, is in peril of collapse. (4)

Governor Stanleyís observation revealed the impact of years governance based on stereotyping and violence, and what he was handed over in 1924 was Zambia which was now amenable to ëgood governmentí and effective colonial administrative practices under the British Colonial Office after 34 years of the British South Africa Company rule, and the subsequent system of Indirect Rule was supposed to be a rational one.