Having united his people in the early nineteenth century, by 1856, the Basotho king, Moshoeshoe I, had come into conflict with Boer settlers who were encroaching on Basotho lands. Faced with the prospect of losing all his territory, in 1868, Moshoeshoe sought British protection, and in 1871, the kingdom was annexed to the Cape Colony. This annexation faced huge opposition and a decade later, many Basotho rose up in rebellion against Cape rule. In 1884, the country became a separate Crown Colony under the name Basutoland. On independence in 1966, the country changed its name to Lesotho.

This book, published in 1909, following Sir Godfrey Lagden’s retirement from colonial service, contains a history of the Basotho people and an account of his time working in the country. Lagden arrived in Basutoland on the colony’s establishment in 1884, serving as secretary to the Commissioner Sir Marshal Clarke, who he eventually succeeded. He remained in the country until 1901, when he received a post in the neighbouring Transvaal Colony. Lagden worked closely with tribal leaders, encouraging Basotho self-governance, the adoption of agricultural practices and the establishment of Christian missions in order to discourage the inter-tribal conflicts that had affected the country for almost a century. On the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899, Lagden declared the colony’s neutrality in the conflict and refused to allow Basotho forces to be drawn into the fighting. However, like many colonial administrators in Britain’s African colonies, Lagden was also responsible for the introduction of the ‘hut tax’, a form of taxation payable in money, grain or livestock, that disproportionally affected Africans, who could rarely afford it and were instead forced into indentured labour.

Due to his experience in Basutoland, between 1903 and his retirement in 1905, Ladgen served as chairman of the South African Native Affairs Commission. The Commission was set up in the aftermath of the Second Anglo-Boer War to find answers to what was termed the ‘native question’, the relationship between white settlers and Black landowners in Southern Africa and Rhodesia (now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi). The outcome of this report, which recommended racial segregation, would have a great effect on the region for much of the twentieth century, particularly in South Africa, where Apartheid policies were introduced by the white minority government in the 1940s and not abolished until 1991, with the first multiracial elections held in 1994.