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‘Khama & Co.’ and the Jousse Trouble, 1910–1916
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Extract
‘Khama & Co.’ was the attempt of an African monarch in colonial east-central Botswana to make his state's internal economy self-reliant through participation in commerce. The company was founded in 1910, and flourished, but the ‘Jousse Trouble’ in 1916 obliged the British imperial administration to dictate its closure. Pressures came from commercial interests well established elsewhere in southern Africa, which wished to subordinate African enterprise to white supremacy, and maybe to incorporate the Bechuanaland Protectorate within Southern Rhodesia or the Union of South Africa.
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References
1 For more detailed treatment of the 1844–1930 period, see Parsons, Q. N., ‘The economic history of Khama's Country in southern Africa’, African Social Research, xviii (12 1974), 643–75.Google Scholar
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48 Cape of Good Hope Nos. 15 of 1856, 18 of 1873, 7 of 1875, 30 of 1889—substantively adopted in Laws of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1891.
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92 See note II above.
93 See protest of Ngwato headmen to R.C., 23 Aug. 1924, against the government's ‘new system of protecting traders to monopolise’—when it overruled Ngwato permission to new traders to set up stores. They asserted that ‘competition is a good thing’ to raise prices given for agricultural produce ‘in support to Tribal revenue’ and for Hut Tax; S.7/1/2 (B.N.A.).
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100 H.C. to Colonial Office, received 28 Apr. 1913—C.O. 879/No. 1003, 8 (P.R.O.).
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