Lesotho

From Thaba Bosiu to the Mountain Kingdom

Lesotho is a mountainous kingdom in southern Africa, entirely surrounded by the territory of South Africa. Its San hunter-gatherer inhabitants left some of the world's richest rock art before Sotho-Tswana farmers settled the region. The Basotho nation was forged in the 1820s by King Moshoeshoe I, who gathered refugees of the difaqane at his stronghold of Thaba Bosiu, fought the Boers of the Orange Free State, and secured British protection in 1868 to keep his land from absorption into South Africa. As the British protectorate of Basutoland it was kept out of the Union of South Africa, and on 4 October 1966 it became the independent Kingdom of Lesotho.