Bechuana

John and Jean Comaroff have shown how western clothes facilitated the colonization of nineteenth century southern Africa, a process they call "conquest by consumption," by inducing the Bechuana to covet western commodities.

The Birmingham Post reported that the Bechuana chiefs, Khama, Sebele and Bathoen, unused to multi-storey living, were hesitant in using stairs:

When a king from Bechuana visited England in 1890s, he won friends and respect everywhere he went, and his tale cast new light on the interactions between Britain and her empire, as Neil Parsons explains.

The entourage included the Bechuana Drum and Bugle Band, army-trained musicians who marched in formation wearing leopard skins, and an epidiascope so that pictures of the war and of the Batswana then participating in it could be widely seen.

One digger, writing in the Diamond News of October 5, 1876, made a similar observation after a massive exodus of Africans from the diamond fields that same year: Zulus, Bechuanas, Batlapins, &c, have made their exit in such large numbers that with all our hatred of and contempt for them as men and laborers we are driven to make the admission that we would rather have their company than their room.