Eswatini

From Citizendium
Revision as of 10:02, 12 February 2014 by imported>Meg Taylor (create)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is a stub and thus not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Swaziland is a landlocked mountainous kingdom bordered north, west, and south by the Republic of South Africa, and Mozambique to the east. The earliest human evidence in the region dates back 200,000 years, with the ancestors of the Khoisan hunter-gatherers. Successive Bantu migrations between the third and eleventh centuries AD led to an established Sotho–Nguni presence in the region, prior to the arrival of Swazi settlers in the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century, political and demographic upheavals occurred with the arrival of displaced Zulu clans, and the appearance of Voortrekkers from the Cape Colony in search of arable land. The Cape Colony attempted to annex Swaziland in 1868 but failed, and in 1879 the kingdom had its independence recognized by the British. Following the end of the Second Boer War in 1903, Swaziland was a British protectorate until 1967, when it became an independent and sovereign member of the Commonwealth of Nations as the Kingdom of Swaziland. The royal city is Lobamba while the administrative and largest city is Mbabane. Estimated population of Swaziland in 2009 was 1,185,000.