page_title: William Harper (Rhodesian politician)
section_title: Emigration to Rhodesia
hierarchical_section_title: William Harper (Rhodesian politician) / Political career / Emigration to Rhodesia
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Own work. Link to user page as attribution.
context_page_description: William John Harper was a politician, general contractor and Royal Air Force fighter pilot who served as a Cabinet minister in Rhodesia from 1962 to 1968, and signed that country's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1965. Born into a prominent Anglo-Indian merchant family in Calcutta, Harper was educated in India and England and joined the RAF in 1937. He served as an officer throughout the Second World War and saw action as one of "The Few" in the Battle of Britain, during which he was wounded in action. Appalled by Britain's granting of independence to India in 1947, he emigrated to Rhodesia on retiring from the Air Force two years later.
  Harper contended that British rule in the subcontinent should never have ended and took a similar stance regarding his adopted homeland, reportedly declaring that it, South Africa, and the neighbouring Portuguese territories would "be under white rule forever". He entered politics with the Dominion Party in 1958 and became Minister of Irrigation, Roads and Road Traffic in the Rhodesian Front government in 1962.
context_section_description: Harper was appalled when Britain made India independent in 1947—he held that the British government had unnecessarily caved in to Indian nationalist demands and should have continued in the subcontinent indefinitely. He retained this view for years afterwards. He retired from the RAF in April 1949 with the rank of wing commander, and the same year emigrated to Southern Rhodesia, a British colony in southern Africa that had been self-governing since 1923. He settled in the central town of Gatooma, where he farmed, mined and set up an earth-moving contractor's business. In 1953, Southern Rhodesia became a territory of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland alongside Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Each territory retained its own political status and government, and Southern Rhodesia's constitutional status was unaltered.
caption: The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953–63)
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