AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
divisions, conflicts, and poverty. As the dominant power in Southern Af-
rica, Britain should resume its responsibilities and, as a first step, take
Moshoeshoe's people under protection.
In December 1867, the British
cabinet accepted that argument and instructed Wodehouse to incorporate
Lesotho in the colony of Natal; but Wodehouse, finding that the Sotho
chiefs were strongly opposed to rule by Natal and its arrogant admin-
istrator, Theophilus Shepstone, annexed Lesotho as the separate British
colony of Basutoland, on March 12, 1868. Faced with a threat to prohibit
the supply of arms and ammunition, the Free State government reluctantly
accepted Wodehouse's decision.f '
In February 1869, Wodehouse and Free State commissioners settled the
Basutoland boundary without consulting the Basotho. Basutoland was to
consist of the land between the Caledon River and the mountain escarp-
ment, minus a triangle between the lower Caledon and its junction with the
Orange. Stripped of the fertile area north of the Caledon, the Sotho were
confined to a small proportion of the arable lands that their ancestors had
occupied before the Mfecane and far less than Governor Napier had recog-
nized as coming under Moshoeshoe's sway in 1843. The Sotho were pro-