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‘Rhodesians Never Die’: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c.1970–1980

Online ISBN:
9780191675935
Print ISBN:
9780198203650
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

‘Rhodesians Never Die’: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c.1970–1980

Ian Hancock
Ian Hancock

Reader in History

Australian National University, Canberra
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Published online:
3 October 2011
Published in print:
25 March 1993
Online ISBN:
9780191675935
Print ISBN:
9780198203650
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book tells the story of how White Rhodesians, three-quarters of whom were ill-prepared for revolutionary change, reacted to the ‘terrorist’ war and the onset of Black rule in the 1970s. It shows how internal divisions — both old and new — undermined the supposed unity of White Rhodesia, how most Rhodesians begrudgingly accepted the inevitability of Black majority rule without adjusting to its implications, and how the self-appointed defenders of Western civilization sometimes adopted uncivilized methods of protecting the ‘Rhodesian way of life’. This account is based on archival research and personal interviews. It sets out to tell the story from the inside and to incorporate the diverse dimensions of the Rhodesian experience. The book suggests that the Rhodesians were more differentiated than has often been assumed and that perhaps their greatest fault was a capacity for self-delusion.

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