aland, establishing forts and land claims centered on Fort Victoria
(Gweru), Salisbury (Harare), and Umtali (Mutare). The pioneer
column and early prospectors both used violence and believed in
violence as a way of legitimizing European rule and extracting gold,
cattle, and labor from the Africans of the territory. In 1893 the set-
tlers and Company successfully provoked the Matabele war, opening
Matabeleland to European occupation, and attacking the Matabele
state. But during 1896 and 1897, the Risings, sometimes known as
the first Chimurenga, broke out as Africans fought, threatening
European profits and control, and proving that Africans could also
use violence. European faith in violence faltered, despite the Com-
pany's eventual bloody military victory. Violence alone, while tem-
porarily useful as a way of raiding a marginal frontier region, proved
an expensive and uncertain way to achieve order or profits. The
Risings taught both Europeans and Africans that they could not af-
ford the costs of unrestrained violence.

In the aftermath of the war, Africans, missionaries, officials, and
settlers sought a more secure basis for order and profits, and began
to develop an image and rhetoric of "civilization" as a strategy for
social change. In Southern Rhodesia, ideas of civilization did state
societal values. But the values were not static. Instead, the ideas
and rhetoric of civilization provided a way to discuss policies de-
signed to promote social change. The Southern Rhodesian idea of
civilization had three major policy implications. It called for a culti-
vation of individualism among Africans. It suggested that conflict
between Africans and Europeans could be blocked if Africans
learned European culture, whether literacy, English, work disci-
pline, or Christianity. And, finally, this idea of civilization placed an
emphasis on the newly liberated individual's acceptance of the
economic logic of market capitalism and participation in market-
oriented economic activity, as a seller of goods or labor.

Ideas of civilization, though, proved an awkward fit with the
economic needs of the region. Employers, nearly all settlers within
the region, demanded cheap labor, coerced if necessary--labor for
prospecting, for mining, for farming, and for all forms of commer-
cial, governmental, and domestic service. In the aftermath of the
South African war, Southern Rhodesia's economy sought to strug-
gle to its feet. The mining sector became increasingly credible as
settlers established hundreds of small mines that, requiring little
capital and paying paltry wages, produced profits from the small
quantities of gold they did mine, and, upon proving their success,

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