Rhodesia-Nyasaland Royal Commission (Bledisloe Commission)

The Bledisloe Commission was established in 1938 during a period of rising "settler" ambition in British Central Africa. White minority leaders in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), led by Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins, were pushing for a "Greater Rhodesia." They sought to merge their self-governing colony with the British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi). Their goal was to secure economic dominance over the region’s vast mineral wealth—particularly the Copperbelt—and to escape the oversight of the British Colonial Office.

Lord Bledisloe, a former Governor-General of New Zealand, led a six-man team across the three territories to gauge public and administrative opinion. The Commission encountered a wall of opposition from the African population. In Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, African leaders and workers expressed deep-seated fears that amalgamation would lead to the extension of Southern Rhodesia’s "pass laws" and discriminatory land policies. They viewed the British Colonial Office as a necessary protector against the more extreme segregationist tendencies of the Southern Rhodesian settlers.

The final report, published in March 1939, was a delicate balancing act. While it acknowledged that the three territories were economically interdependent and that some form of "closer union" was a natural end-goal, it explicitly rejected the settlers' demand for immediate amalgamation. Bledisloe noted that the "native policies" of the three governments were too divergent to be reconciled at that time.

The Commission proposed a middle path: the immediate merger of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (which both remained under London's direct control) and the creation of an Inter-Territorial Council to coordinate services like transport and research. However, the outbreak of World War II just months after the report’s release effectively shelved its findings. It wasn't until 1953 that the British government ignored many of Bledisloe’s warnings about African opposition and formed the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which would eventually collapse a decade later under the pressure of African nationalist movements.