Colonial expansion, colonial rule and African responses in Southern Africa
Concepts: the Scramble for Africa; the Berlin Conference (1884-85); chartered companies, notably the British South Africa Company (1889); protectorate versus colony; indirect rule; hut tax; land alienation and reserves; pass laws; migrant labour; primary and secondary resistance; collaboration.
Botswana's case: in 1885 Britain declared a protectorate over Bechuanaland, partly to block Boer and German expansion. In 1895 the Cape Colony attempted annexation; Khama III, Sebele and Bathoen travelled to Britain and used petitions, British legal argument and the press to secure a reprieve. The Jameson Raid (1895-96) discredited Cape ambitions. Britain retained only a strip for the railway, and the chiefs kept substantial authority - an unusually favourable outcome for the region.
Comparisons: the South African War (1899-1902); the Herero and Nama genocide in German South West Africa (1904-08); Bambatha's rebellion in Natal (1906); the Natives Land Act (1913).
Traps: believing Berlin 'carved up' Africa by drawing borders - it set rules for claiming territory, not lines on a map; equating a protectorate with a colony; reducing African responses to armed resistance, when petitions, litigation, migration, strikes and selective cooperation mattered more often; branding any accommodating chief a 'collaborator' without asking what room for manoeuvre he had.
Rule of thumb: for any African response, write: who acted, what they wanted, which method they chose, how the colonial power replied, what changed, and why the outcome differed elsewhere.
Worked example: the 1895 deputation succeeded not because Britain was sympathetic but because the three chiefs made annexation politically costly and because British imperial interests shifted after the Raid.