History Lesson

we've got some impeachments coming down the pike. Emails, all that, so much more coming up in the third hour of The Jesse Kelly Show. But it's our two, and as promised, we are now going to pick up where we left off last night and continue our history, a history not many people know about the Rhodesian Bush War. If you missed a lot of the background, so much of it was background, It was tribal stuff. And if you miss that, I don't have time to recap it for you. Now

we must move on in the story. iHeart Spotify iTunes. You can go download the podcast. It's all free. There's no charge for any of this. Our two of last night, we gave a lot of the background. Your thirty second to one minute background. Is this. A man named Cecil Rhodes grabbed a bunch of miners, other people, yes, women and children, walked into a tribal land, a tribal land that had stuff he wanted. They started to mine there.

There were two historically there were more, but two main rival tribes there who'd hated each other and slaved each other, slaughtered each other, raped each other, and burned each other alive for a very long time. At some point they did it in front of the Europeans. There was a big uprising. The Europeans were mortified by such savagery, and they stepped up and they said, okay, this place is kind of ours. Now this is done. You all, you people,

you tribes, you tribesmen, you go over there. You other tribesmen, you go over there. Now. This is what colonization looked like a lot of the time. We're about to lay it out for the British Empire. Remember when your history professor in college was whining and crying about colonialism. That's actually kind of a ridiculous term because there are so many different ways to quote colonize a country and let's be honest, right now. Colonization is simply a more peaceful

form of conquest. That's what it is. So let's just call it all conquest, shall we. There is a spectrum, isn't there? We could go with the old. Well, the easiest one would be Genghis Khan form of conquest. Hey, I really like your lands. I think I shall take my gigantic army in there, and i will slaughter every man, woman and child. I'll even send a rearguard back to your city to ensure I killed all the pets, and

then I'll move in. That is obviously an extreme end of that spectrum, but that's how conquest has been done. Then there are other types. The French. The French would be more likely to kind of not really move in, but trade with you, right, They'll provide security, they'll trade with you. The Spanish. The Spanish were about as hands off with so much of their conquest as you can be.

And I know about the Spanish conquest of Mexico and whatnot, but the Spanish and all their colonization or conquest, they really just kind of wanted the gold. Hey, just give me some gold. You have any gold, I'll take some gold. British, in my opinion, did it smarter than anyone else. Because here's what the British always believed about conquering colonizing any place. The British believed that you should move in. They believe

that possession was nine tenths of the law. And you can't ever really grab control of a place just by sending emissaries from Afar and picking up a shipment of gold along the coast. No, you needed your people physically building homes and schools and roads. You need your people moving in and setting up shop. But wait, there's more. I don't want to make it sound all bad. You're against conquest. They also believed in integrating the local population as you moved in. The Brits did not want to

slaughter everybody. They actually didn't want to send everyone away as requ you geez. And we're talking about this spot in Africa Africa here, but Britain did this in many other places. They wanted to find a way where Yes, they took over. I'm not making them sound completely magnanimous here. They wanted to take over, but they also wanted to Hey, all these tribes and things like that, look will help

you out too. How About how about some clothes, how about a job, how about access to medicine, how about how let's let's help let us help you too. You are gonna work for us, like you're gonna work under us. Let's be honest, but we're gonna help each other here your life will be better. And I don't want to act as if they did this just out of the

kindness of their hearts. Of course there'd be some of that, but really, for the Brits, and this is why I think it was so brilliant, it just made more sense. We want to take the place, we want to take it over. Slaughtering everybody generally doesn't work. It's hard to do, it's hard to make. As we've talked about before in the show, you can't really kill your way out of

a problem. Usually that's difficult. But if you can somehow make the people you're conquering, make their day to day lives better, then you have to deal with a lot less rebellion, a lot fewer problems. They might even go along with it. And in fact, Rhodesia eventually we're not quite there yet. Rhodesia kind of gets to that place for a while. But right now we are post this little tribal war. The English are mortified. The Europeans in Zimbabwe are mortified, and they say, okay, enough is enough.

Now it's ours. But what does it's ours mean? Well, let's talk about what it was before the Europeans got there. As you know, tribal lands. But what does that mean tribal lands? Well, a tribe at least these tribes, the way they worked, they would find some remote area, it's all remote, there's no civilization. They'd find an area that had things they needed. And what does every tribe need? Every tribe needs some way to eat. Maybe you're a

hunting tribe, maybe you do agriculture. Every tribe needs water. Let's find a river, let's find something. Tribes are going to find locations that work for them and that's where they're going to build their village, their huts. That's how it's going to work. And in many ways, the tribes were extremely isolated. The villages were isolated from each other. These were people who didn't build roads, they didn't have the wheel you as a young boy, I mentioned the

two tribes yesterday. I'll mention them again, the Shona and the Indobelly and by the way, the Indiebelly go buy several names. I'm just calling them into belly, the Shona in the Indobelly. If you were a young boy, you were born in this village, for this Indobelly village, there is a reasonable chance you never left. Yeah, you would go out and you would go hunt, or maybe you would go to war or something like that. But you

certainly didn't bounce around the country. We modern day people, certainly modern day Americans, anyone, anyone living in a first world country live listening to me right now? You've been on a road trip. How abnout you? Maybe you still live in your hometown, but you know what a place one hundred miles from you looks like, don't you? Of course you're almost probably scoffing. I'm laughing. Of course everyone does.

Maybe you've even been on a plane. That way of thinking is totally foreign to these people who live in this area. What's one of the very first things the Europeans start to do. Roads, They start to build roads, they start to build train tracks. Why well, they're moving goods and services and people to and fro and now they're connecting villages that had previously never been connected before.

The African people in some time, in some ways they're moving to and fro in ways they've never moved before. And in some ways they're getting run out of an area. If the English, if the europe let's stop calling them English, because there were people from all over the European world. If the Europeans wanted that area, remember they decided they were in charge. Now they said you need to leave. Well, they were also integrating the local population, as I mentioned,

they tried to do that. They really believed in doing that. Let's find a way to weave these people into our society. And remember there weren't very many Europeans at the time, not very many at all. They were way outnumbered by the tribesmen. So crime, for instance, you don't have this large European police force, what do you do for cops? Every area needs cops. Well, that can create problems if

you don't understand the area you're taking over. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a fantastic, Fantastic Wednesday, a hump Day, doing part two of our history of the Rhodesian Bush War. Remember you can email us your love, your hate, your death threats, Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. The Europeans are starting to take over. They're starting to build roads, they're starting to build trains, They're starting to connect African villages that have never been connected before. They're

starting to run Africans out of certain places. Now this is where this is why I keep bringing up the two tribes, because these two tribes, the fact that there are two tribes who hate each other, is always going to come into play in this entire story, right up to the horrible brutal ending of it. Not to give the whole thing away, Remember before these guys even got here, the Shonah had been conquered by the end of Belly. They were slaves under the end of Belly. Those kinds

of hard feelings don't go away easily. And the Europeans just got there, they just arrived five minutes ago. It's hard to understand everything about the culture you're conquering. It's hard to understand old tribal rivalries and bad blood. It's hard to understand the religious significance, different significance of different things, for instance, And this is going to come into play for virtually all these tribes. You know what was really a currency for them, almost a sacred level of currency,

a status symbol. Cattle. How many cattle do how many cows do you have? You have a lot of cattle. Oh you've only got three. Oh that sucks, Chris, I've got five. Must suck to be so low class. I mean you're laughing, But that's how that's how it worked. If you were a king, part of that status would be look at all of our cattle. Well what are cattle to the Europeans at this point in time? Just what they're beef? It's beef or it's mail. It's no big deal. You raise them, you kill them, you whatever.

It's just one of those things they didn't quite get. They also needed a police force, and they're trying to integrate the local tribes. But let me ask you something. Do you ever have any bad blood in your family? Every family has it, maybe even in your town, a rival town, a rival family. Arrival, this arrival that I want you to imagine this when it comes to Zimbabwe that we're talking about right now. Let's say your people,

your people had historically kept the Shona as slaves and slavery. Remember, was not touchy feely, not at all ugly things for women children. Let's just say maybe your mother had been a slave of the endobelly. You're now twenty five years old. Your mother raised you with those stories of what the

Indibelly did to them. The Europeans knock on the door of your hut and they're handing you a policeman's uniform, because now you are going to help police some of the indobelly areas and you have the power of law enforcement behind your badge. You don't have some oath you take or even believe in. You're a tribesman who's historically been at war, and that tribe has historically abused your family. And now you're about to get a weapon and two or three of your cop buddies and you're about to

walk into their area. Do you think there would be any temptation to abuse that kind of power. This happened often. The Europeans were having and will always have such a difficult time keeping the tribes separate from each other, understanding the depth of hatred they have for each other. There was African police abuse, African on African police abuse all over the place. Combine that with this I already talked about historically how these tribes worked, they lived in their

little villages. Now they're being moved onto what are essentially reservations. They're getting moved away from their historic homelands. They're not thrilled about it. Now let's add one more to it. And this is a long complicated affair. For the sake of not having this be a ten episode thing, I'm fast forwarding through some things. There gets to be a plague with the cows. What do the Europeans do when there's a cow plague? They do what any civilized society

would do, and they start to kill the cows. I just got done explaining cows are sacred to these people, a status symbol to these people. As a European, you may have everyone's best interests at heart. When you send a few guys onto somebody's land and shoot twenty of his cows in the head, he is almost undoubtedly going to interpret that act differently than you do. It's bad. Rebellion breaks out. Rebellion breaks out. In fact, you should know. I won't tell you the name of it because it's

another detail. I'm already drowning you in details. But they consider the Rhodesian Bush War to be the second version of this rebellion, that's what they call it. This is the first of these rebellions. The tribes rise up, they rebel. They are not as technologically advanced they do, however, have the numbers. It's slaughter, it's destruction. They're doing things like one miner he had worked with ten Africans on a

mine for a long time. He then found himself with them crawling into the mind trying to beat him to death one night. There are some stories I'll tell you in a moment. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wonderful Wednesday talking about the land down under Africa tonight as we go, Quit what, Chris, I'm not a geologist, all right, I don't know everything. All right. Back to our history of the Rhodesian Bush War. The Europeans had set up the trains, they'd set up the villages. The

tribes were hating each other. The tribes were not liking this European rule, and they broke out in rebellion. Now, this is nothing like the rebellion that will happen during the Rhodesian Bush War. This is completely disorganized. There aren't any central leaders. And remember the two tribes hate each other as much as they hate the Europeans. So what

does this rebellion look like? It sounds horrifying, but it's essentially small areas where panic gets inflamed, anger gets inflamed, and it's oftentimes led by local religious leaders, local tribal religious leaders, you know, all these weird tribal false religions. Local religious leaders would get their local area to rise up against the white invaders, the European invaders. I told you briefly about that story of the miner. Well you

know how most of that story went. He walked out of his house to find ten Africans who he had worked with on the mine, not slaves or something like that, you know, working with him every day lunch wages that there were co workers with war clubs. This animal manages to wrestle one of the war clubs from him. They start beating him. He starts swinging back and beating them.

He makes his way all the way into the mind shaft where he rolls down into the mind shaft, and then he has more miners in the mind shaft who he's worked with, who he thinks will come to his aid, and they start beating him too. He starts fighting them off. He's fighting his way through the mines. These things happen. In another incident, two guys are sitting there, there are women and children hidden behind them, and the tribesmen have so rounded the mine and they are essentially getting ready

to kill everyone in it. The two dudes make a break for it. What are they making a break for. They're going for the telegraph line so they can telegraph for help so the women and children won't die. They book it. One of them, actually both of them end up making it the entire way to the telegraph hut. One holds the door closed from the angry tribesman behind him, while the other gets on the telegraph machine and telegraphs

the message out. Eventually the door is kicked down and both men die with African spears sticking out from all over their bodies. This is taking place all across Zimbabwe at this time, but as I said, it is not unified. It is poorly led. And eventually the Europeans raise for themselves, or they should say, they get back their army. Long story I won't go into. Most of their fighting men had gone to fight somewhere else and they'd been captured.

They get their fighting men, and their fighting men are organized and they are well led, and they start to put this rebellion down. They put it down to such effect. The rebels are now starving. The rebels are hiding in caves, and the Europeans are dynamiting rebels out of caves, dynamiting the entrance, starving them. And there's an or horrible, horrible,

ugly affair. Cecil Rhodes, the guy who started all this, he brings all the tribal leaders together finally after a very vicious little war, and he negotiates a peace because the tribes are starving. They're starving. They're done. Only now, this is the problem with rebellion, when you lose one. If you lose one, you are always going to end up worse off than you were before. If you're going to rebel, you better win. The whole history of the

world proves this to be the case. It's almost weird when you look back and you wonder why so many people rebelled. We're going to rebel against Babylon. Oh no, we're all skinned alive. I mean, it just doesn't it doesn't work. Now they have no more control. And now after the negotiated peace, now Britain is no longer doing that. Well, it's not really our thing. It's kind of a private enterprise thing. Nope, now this is the nineteen twenties. Now

Britain says no, no, no, no, no, it's our country now. Now. They even gave it a name, South Rhodesia. By the way, in case you're wondering, Yes, that name comes from the name Cecil Rhodes And no he didn't name it. In fact, he didn't even like the name, which is weird. I've always wanted a country named after me. That is not what he preferred at all, but Rhodesia. Only at this point in time, it's named South Rhodesia. Let's fast forward just a little bit. They are locking in their control

of the area. They're building whole cities. Now, they're trying to modernize this country as possible in a long comes World War two. This part is going to be important for our story as we move along. I already told you the kind of people last night, the kind of Europeans who came here. These were not convicts who just got out. These were not idiot's welfare recipients. In many ways, it was the cream of the crop for Europeans and their children. They were tough as nails as well, not

these effeminate, you know, pinky out people. Tough as nails. And they also had because there were so few of them, and a country that was so big, with so many bigger tribes, mandatory military service for all the males. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a magnificent Monday. I swear, if you're suffering, we'll be back to politics in ten minutes. But we're doing part two of the Rhodesian bush War. Now. We just finished the rebellion. The Europeans put down the rebellion.

Britton essentially decided, okay, that's enough of all this playing games. Now it's a country. Now, it's our country. In fact, we're slapping a name on it now it's called South Rhodesia. And well, the way it works is, of course, World War two breaks out. The Rhodesians, as I mentioned, black and white military men went off and fought valiantly for

the Brits. That will end up mattering later on. But something else happens, and this is the ugly part of life, the ironic, I guess I should should say part of life. In a lot of ways war can be good for economies. Certainly, if you are a country that produces stuff, war can be very good for you. Why are the Europeans in Rhodesia to begin with? It's rich with resources, The land is wonderful for agriculture. There are things to mine there.

And guess which empire needs stuff right about now? Well the Allies, well all of them, but the Allies need it. The economy starts booming, booming, there are huge checks coming into Rhodesia because the Allies needs stuff. Well, this is Africa, we already mentioned. It's a rough place. It's been a rough place, just has not become a modern continent. Ever, what do you think happens when the Rhodesian econo enomy

starts booming. The word goes out. The word goes out to all the other countries around there who may be struggling. There's always a famine, always a war, always a plague. And more Africans start pouring into Rhodesia looking for work, looking for an opportunity, and they find them. But as usually happens, the war doesn't last forever. And after the war is over, let's say let's say it's the year nineteen forty one in your Rhodesia, just for the sake

of argument, and your economy starts booming. Everyone knows it. Everyone in Africa knows it. And so let's just say you get a million, two million Africans from other countries coming in to take advantage of the opportunity to feed their families, clothed themselves, you know, all those things. But then nineteen forty five rolls around in bip war over. Well, there's still a market obviously for crops and chrome and the other things they mind, but not near the market

it once was. Well, now all those people have already come in, Now they've already brought jobs in. Now there's not as much economic opportunity to go around, yet the people are still there. This creates a situation that from the outside looking in, looks terrible. The situation being this, you have these extremely wealthy, modern looking, mostly white, although there were plenty of black people. There are extremely modern, wealthy looking towns that would have looked like any town

in America, any city in Europe popping up. Only on the outskirts there are extremely run down, poor, all black shanty towns that start popping up. The reason this is so disastrous is post World War Two, there was a thing that was happening globally. It wasn't just to Britain. After World War Two, countries that had empires overseas started to give them up. Sometimes they fought hard for them,

you know, this was the French in Vietnam. Whe they eventually lost that, but they fought hard trying to keep it. Some countries just flat out walked away from it. But no matter what, there is a macro movement happening on planet Earth post World War two. And that movement was, Hey, you super powerful empires with a colony here and a colony there in Britain's in India, and the French are in Vietnam, and everyone's in Africa. Hey, you know what, no more, no more, It's time to walk away from

your overseas empire. And I'm going to put this in quotes because I don't necessarily believe in this, but the quote decolonization movement has begun. Now, well, how do you think Rhodesia looks to the rest of the world when everyone else is giving up their overseas territories. And now you look at this insanely wealthy prosperous African country. These other African countries, for the most part, they're sucking it up. They're doing terribly well. Rhodesia, certainly the Rhodesians are the

Europeans in Rhodesia. Rhodesia they're thriving, and the African peoples in Rhodesia they're on reservations, just like our Indian reservations. They're on reservations where the Europeans put them, or they're in shanty towns. And there's another part of it that just looked bad. And this is actually how we're going to open our show tomorrow. So let me ask a question. Who should get to vote in any society? Who deserves to say in the government of any society? I think

you would probably agree with me. That shouldn't be everybody, right, you don't want twelve year olds to vote? Of course, if there's some serial killer getting ready to be executed tomorrow, do you want his vote cancel he's canceling out your vote for president tomorrow? No, okay? So will at least agree on that it shouldn't be everybody? Okay? So that

means there should be limits? What limits? How do you form a nation, a good if that's what you want to be, A good, prosperous country, a country considered to be free, while also putting limits on who has a say in the government. In Rhodesia, the Africans did not have a say in the government. No say, none, and that's about to be a problem. We'll have to continue that tomorrow. Before we do that, let's do some more politics,

shall we. Let's talk about some AI impeachments, influence operations, emails more Next