Swaziland Protectorate

A kingdom that was signed away in pieces and reassembled by outlasting everyone. Swazi power had been consolidated under Sobhuza I and Mswati II in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the country's borders were guaranteed by Britain and the Transvaal in the conventions of 1881 and 1884. The guarantee proved worth little. In the following decade King Mbandzeni granted concessions to a stream of European speculators - for grazing, minerals, timber, customs collection, even the right to collect the king's own revenues - until nearly the whole country had been conceded several times over to people who did not always understand that Swazi law recognised no permanent alienation of land. The Transvaal took over administration in 1894. After the South African War, Britain assumed control in 1903, and in 1907 a commission settled the concessions by awarding roughly two-thirds of the land to Europeans outright. Recovering it became the monarchy's organising purpose for sixty years. Sobhuza II, who came to the throne in 1921 and reigned until 1982, litigated the question to the Privy Council, lost, and then set about buying land back through a national fund. As with the other High Commission territories, transfer to South Africa remained a possibility until apartheid closed it. Independence came on 6 September 1968 under a Westminster constitution that Sobhuza repealed five years later, ruling by decree thereafter. The country was renamed Eswatini in 2018.Sobhuza II's reign of sixty-one years is the longest of any monarch with verifiable dates. The land bought back through his national fund is still held in trust for the nation by the king rather than owned outright.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration