To understand why the British South Africa Police came into existence, one needs to look at a brief history of Africa and the actions of the colonising powers.

Around 1000 BC Bantu races started migrating East and South across Africa. Around 300 AD elements had arrived in what became Rhodesia and the Transvaal. In the process from a Southern African perspective they had subjugated or displaced the Khoisan inhabitants of that area. By the latter part of the 1700s and early 1800’s they had occupied the land to the North of the Orange River and the land to the East of the Fish River.

The white races, comprised of British and Afrikaner, subjugated the Khoisan in the Cape and moving North and East met the Bantu races more or less along those rivers. The Xhosa Wars in the Eastern Cape continued from 1779 to 1879 while the Great Trek of the Afrikaners across the Orange River into what became the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics took place between 1835 and 1843.

Meanwhile the French had extended their influence from West Africa across to the Nile in Sudan where they met the British coming up the Nile from Egypt. The Germans were established in Tanganyika and South-West Africa, the Belgians in the Congo and the Portuguese in Moçambique and Angola.

In the 1880’s the British were already considering having their influence stretch from Cape to Cairo. In 1884 the Warren Expedition was a military expedition that pushed up from the Cape into what became the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) to prevent the Boer Republics from joining with the Germans in South-West Africa, thereby blocking the possibility of a British Cape to Cairo corridor.

In August 1885 at Barkly West near Kimberly, the Bechuanaland Border Police was formed to police the area of no-man’s land pacified by the Warren Expedition.

Gold had been discovered in abundance in the Transvaal and diamonds in the Northern Cape. It was considered at the time, the same mineral wealth would be found North of the Limpopo River in the land that became Rhodesia.

In 1888 the scramble for concessions with Lobengula and the Ndebele began, eventually obtained controversially by Cecil Rhodes, which led to the establishment of the British South Africa Company, chartered by Queen Victoria in 1889 to take control of the land between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers. Apart from the possible financial gains from mining, this would prevent the joining of the Boer Republics with the Germans of South-West Africa and the Portuguese in Moçambique and Angola, and would be part of the British push to the North.

The British South Africa Company’s Police was formed to protect the Pioneer Column on its march across the Limpopo. About half this new force came from the Bechuanaland Border police.

The story continues once the Pioneer Column had reached Fort Salisbury: the British South Africa Company’s Police force was disbanded; and the British South Africa Police was formed from the Mashonaland Mounted Police, Matabeleland Mounted Police and other entities. This is covered in other articles on the subject.