This book deals with the panics which swept Southern Rhodesia in the period from 1902 until the mid 1930s. The supposed sexual threat posed by the proximity of black men and white women. It also resulted in the execution of innocent men for the crimes of rape and attempted rape. The panics, which were known as Black Peril, were complex events which encompass such topics as the management of venereal disease, the politics of concubinage, and the construction of whiteness.