The Establishment Of The Protectorate (Part 1) Founding Myths

To add to what this author and others have previously published, here it may once more be noted that the Protectorate over the southern Botswana, all the way up to the Tuli Circle, was in fact unilaterally proclaimed in London on the 27th of January 1885, being subsequently extended to the remaining northern part of the country in 1890, in each case by means of a distinctly British legislative instrument known as an Order-in-Council.

At the time no local Dikgosi had appealed to the British for assistance. The direct motive for the January 1885 Order in Council was rather to preclude the probability of the territory otherwise falling under the Germans, who in 1884 had occupied much of neighbouring South-West Africa (Namibia). The establishment of the Bechuanaland Protectorate was thus part of the wider late nineteenth century scramble for Africa.