1900 British South Africa Company Map of a Rail Line in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia)

This is a 1900 British South Africa Company map of the railway line between Salisbury (Harare) and Umtali (Mutare) in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Printed to accompany a short article in the Geographical Journal published in February 1900, this section of the railway constructed by the British South Africa Company connected Salisbury with Beira, a port on the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. The British South Africa Company (BSAC) received its Royal Charter in 1899, which had been modeled on the charter of the British East India Company. The BSAC began building the railroad in the belief that large deposits of gold and silver would be found in Mashonaland and would provide the capital to make the railway financially viable. These deposits, however, were not as prolific as originally believed. Two different routes are illustrated here. The route indicated in a solid red line is the route that was completed in 1899, while the black dotted line illustrates a proposed route that was abandoned, due to the number of large rivers it would have to cross during the rainy season.

The history of the BSAC railway is intertwined with European colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa during the beginning of the 20th century. Its main purpose was the export of mined natural resources from both Rhodesia (coal) and King Leopold II's Congo (copper). The Beira line, as it was known, carried almost all of the copper mined in the Katanga region of the Congo from 1912, when full-scale copper production began, until 1928, when a Congolese railway opened. Even after the Congolese route entered service, up to a third of Katanga copper still went to Beira.

This map was produced by the British South Africa Company printed in reduced format by the Royal Geographical Society in the Geographical Journal in February 1900.