Indian Settlement in Bechuanaland Protectorate: Immigration, Trade and the Limits of Colonial Government, 1880–1935

Abstract

ABSTRACT The history of people of Indian origin in southern Africa has been dominated by the history of the large and influential populations of South Africa. The neglect of other parts of the region has meant that the particularities of Indian settlement and its relationship with the colonial governance and local populations, especially in the poorest and most marginal colonies, have in turn been neglected. I argue that the fact of the Bechuanaland Protectorate’s late colonisation, strong chieftainships and lack of obvious resources meant that Indian settlers were more able to subvert colonial officials’ attempts to duplicate the types of wholesale racial exclusion found in South Africa. The Protectorate’s marginality meant that, unlike the more politically and diplomatically powerful dominions, they were unable to sidestep central ideological justifications for the broader imperial project itself – the protected status of subject peoples. Indian settlers were able to combine the fact of a small and relatively weak colonial authority with the threat of political embarrassment to subvert and undermine efforts at their exclusion. The conflict that ensued forged the small but influential and deeply embedded ‘Batswana-Indian’ community in Botswana.