Swaziland Becomes a British Protectorate
Swaziland became a British protectorate in 1903 having been, for the twenty years before that, the object of a concessions racket that had signed away almost everything it owned. The kingdom had been consolidated in the nineteenth century and had survived the Zulu wars and the Boer republics as an independent state. What undid it was paper. From the 1880s European speculators obtained concessions from King Mbandzeni for grazing, minerals, and then for revenue collection, customs, and the right to run the postal service - hundreds of them, overlapping, many covering the same ground twice, some granting monopolies over functions of government itself. By the time he died in 1889 the concessions covered more land than the kingdom contained. A joint British and Transvaal commission was set up to sort them out, and in 1894 the country was placed under the administration of the South African Republic, without being annexed to it. The Anglo-Boer war changed the owner rather than the arrangement. Britain took over in 1902 and declared a protectorate in 1903, administered from Pretoria and then through a resident commissioner. A partition of the land in 1907 confirmed roughly two thirds of it in European hands, and the Swazi monarchy spent the following decades buying parts of its own country back with cattle money and mineral royalties. It was one of three British High Commission Territories in southern Africa never incorporated into the Union, which is why it became independent in 1968 rather than a province of South Africa.
- Year: 1903 CE
- Category: Political
