kuniga.me > Docs > History of Botswana Cheatsheet
Prior to 1000, the land corresponding to Botswana was inhabited by the San people. From 1000 to 1500 Bantu speaking people migrated into Southern Africa. They came from the region of today’s Nigeria and Senegal. The most spoken language in today’s Botswana, Tswana, is evidence of that, since it’s part of the Bantu family of languages, alongside Zulu and Xhosa spoken in South Africa.
From 1500 to 1800 Tswana societies organized into chiefdoms.
In the early 1800s a mass displacement process known as Difaqane or Mfecana happened from South Africa after the Zulus, under Shaka Zulu, started conquering territory from local tribes.
The refugees didn’t stay long in Botswana (probably because of Botswana’s semi-arid climate) but continued northwards to places like Zimbabwe but they were a threat to locals as they passed, and thus it caused power to centralize into fewer chiefdoms for better defense.
In 1885 Britain declared Botswana a protectorate, named Bechuanaland. This was mainly to blockade expansion of the Boers (the Great Trek) from their colonies in the Transvaal and the Orange Colony.
In 1895 three Tswana chiefs went to Britain to petition queen Victoria to protect their lands from colonial takeover (I first heard of this from Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson).
In 1910, after the Second Boer war, South Africa formed the Union of South Africa which included Cape Colony, Natal Colony, the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. But England did not transfer ownership of Bechuanaland to them.
In 1962 Seretse Khama forms the Botswana Democratic Party (BPD). The first elections were in 1965 and in 1966 Botswana gains independence from Britain, with Khama as the first president. This was a unusually peaceful independence process, compared to other African countries.
Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world, but in the 1970s diamond deposits are found. It became the largest exporter of diamonds by value.