Botswana—A Modern Economic History: An African Diamond in the Rough, by Ellen Hillbom and Jutta Bolt

Abstract

Botswana—A Modern Economic History traces Botswana’s economic development from precolonial times through the development of the cattle-led industry to the diamond-mining period. This book is divided into four parts. The first chapter in part one gives an overview of the entire book. Chapter two examines precolonial sociopolitical and economic livelihoods, before tracing the origins of pastoralism and labour migration to the mines of the Witwatersrand. Building on the previous chapter, part two, which consists of chapter three, follows the development of pastoralism to the point where it dominated the economy until the early 1970s. Urbanisation in this period was minimal.