Losing Power

The mining of copper and lead started in the early 1900s. By 1909 the central railroad from Livingstone to Ndola had been completed. By then about 1,500 Europeans had settled in Zambia. In 1924 the British took over the administration of the protectorate. In the late 1920s extensive copper deposits were discovered in what was soon to be known as the Copper Belt. By the late 1930s about 4,000 European skilled workers and 20,000 African Laborers were working there. The Africans protested the discrimination and poor treatment they were subjected to by having strikes in 1934, 1940, and 1956. Africans then weren’t allowed to form unions, but they did organize secret groups that brought together people of different ethnic backgrounds.