Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

colonization was worthwhile. The high commissioner Rey summarized the attitudes ofthe British government in 1885 clearly: “We have no interest in the country to the north of the Molope [the Bechuanaland protectorate], except as a road to the interior; we might therefore confine ourselves for the present to preventing that part of the Protectorate being occupied by either filibusters or foreign powers doing as little in the way of administration or settlement as possible.”
    But things changed for the Tswana in 1889 when Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company started expanding north out of South Africa, expropriating great swaths of land that would eventually become Northern and Southern Rhodesia, now Zambia and Zimbabwe. By 1895, the year of the three chiefs’ visit to London, Rhodes had his eye on territories to the southwest of Rhodesia, Bechuanaland. The chiefs knew that only disaster and exploitation lay ahead for territories if they fell under the control of Rhodes. Though it was impossible for them to defeat Rhodes militarily, they were determined to fight him any way they could. They decided to opt for the lesser of two evils: greater control by the British rather than annexation by Rhodes. With the help of the London Missionary Society, they traveled to London to try to persuade Queen Victoria and Joseph Chamberlain, then colonial secretary, to take greater control of Bechuanaland and protect it from Rhodes.
    On September 11, 1895, they had their first meeting with Chamberlain. Sebele spoke first, then Bathoen, and finally Khama. Chamberlain declared that he would consider imposing British control to protect the tribes from Rhodes. In the meantime, the chiefs quickly embarked on a nationwide speaking tour to drum up popular support for their requests. They visited and spoke at Windsor and Reading, close to London; in Southampton on the south coast; and in Leicester and Birmingham, in Chamberlain’s political support base, the Midlands. They went north to industrial Yorkshire, to Sheffield, Leeds, Halifax, and Bradford; they also went west to Bristol and then up to Manchester and Liverpool.
    Meanwhile, back in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes was making preparations for what would become the disastrous Jameson Raid, an armed assault on the Boer Republic of the Transvaal, despite Chamberlain’s strong objections. These events likely made Chamberlain much moresympathetic to the chiefs’ plight than he might have been otherwise. On November 6, they met with him again in London. The chiefs spoke through an interpreter:
    Chamberlain: I will speak about the lands of the Chiefs, and about the railway, and about the law which is to be observed in the territory of the Chiefs … Now let us look at the map … We will take the land that we want for the railway, and no more.
    Khama: I say, that if Mr. Chamberlain will take the land himself, I will be content.
    Chamberlain: Then tell him that I will make the railway myself by the eyes of one whom I will send and I will take only as much as I require, and will give compensation if what I take is of value.
    Khama: I would like to know how [i.e., where] the railway will go.
    Chamberlain: It shall go through his territory but shall be fenced in, and we will take no land.
    Khama: I trust that you will do this work as for myself, and treat me fairly in this matter.
    Chamberlain: I will guard your interests.
    The next day, Edward Fairfield, at the Colonial Office, explained Chamberlain’s settlement in more detail:
    Each of the three chiefs, Khama, Sebele and Bathoen, shall have a country within which they shall live as hitherto under the protection of the Queen. The Queen shall appoint an officer to reside with them. The chiefs will rule their own people much as at present.
    Rhodes’s reaction to being outmaneuvered by the three African chiefs was predictable. He cabled to one of his employees, saying, “I do object to being beaten by three canting natives.”
    The chiefs in fact had something valuable that they had protectedfrom Rhodes and would subsequently protect from British indirect rule. By the nineteenth century, the Tswana states had developed a core set of political institutions. These involved both an unusual degree, by sub-Saharan African standards, of political centralization and collective decision-making procedures that can even be viewed as a nascent, primitive form of pluralism. Just as the Magna Carta enabled the participation of barons into the