The British South Africa Company's administration of what will  become Rhodesia is chartered in 1889 by Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and begins with the Pioneer Column's march north-east to Mashonaland in 1890.

Empowered by its charter to acquire, govern and develop the area north of the Transvaal in southern Africa, the Company, headed by Cecil Rhodes, raises its own armed forces and carves out a huge bloc of territory through treaties, concessions and occasional military action, most prominently overcoming the Matabele army in the First and Second Matabele Wars of the 1890s

By the turn of the century, Rhodes's Company holds  a vast, land-locked country, bisected by the Zambezi river.

It officially names this land Rhodesia in 1895, and runs it until the early 1920s.

The area south of the Zambezi becomes Southern Rhodesia, while that to the north becomes North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia, which are joined in 1911 to form Northern Rhodesia.

Within Northern Rhodesia, there as a separate Kingdom called Barotseland which later becomes a British protectorate alongside other territories under the British sphere of influence.

Each territory is administered separately, with an administrator heading each territorial legislature.

In Southern Rhodesia, which attracts the most white immigrants and develops fastest, a legislative council is established in 1898.

This comprises a blend of Company-nominated officials and elected members, with the numbers of each fluctuating over time.

Partially motivated by Rhodes's dream of a Cape to Cairo Railway, railway and telegraph lines are laid across previously barren Rhodesia with great speed, linking South Africa to the Belgian Congo's southern Katanga province by 1910.

The British South Africa Police, responsible for law enforcement in Southern Rhodesia, is established in 1896.

A number of police forces north of the river amalgamate to form the Northern Rhodesia Police in 1911.

Northern and Southern Rhodesians fight alongside the British in the Second Boer War and the First World War; about forty percent of Southern Rhodesian white men fight in the latter, mostly on the Western Front in Europe.

Black soldiers serve in East Africa with the Rhodesia Native Regiment.

As the number of elected members in the Legislative Council rises, power in Southern Rhodesia gradually transfers from complete Company rule to effective self-government by the growing number of white settlers

In a 1922 referendum, Southern Rhodesians choose responsible government within the British Empire over incorporation into the Union of South Africa.

The Company's charter is duly revoked by Whitehall in 1923, and Southern Rhodesia becomes a self-governing colony of Britain in October that year.

Northern Rhodesia becomes a directly-run British protectorate in April 1924.