While it underscores the central role of chiefship structures in the historical processes of state formation, this book also analyzes the transformation of the institution of chiefship in three major themes of modern Botswana’s political history: Botswana’s encounter with British imperial rule; the decolonization process of the post-World War II years; and the nation state project of a nationalist elite in the ongoing postcolonial period.

Vaughan clearly illustrates how chiefship serves an effective medium for the analyses of complex expressions of local politics during colonial rule and the developmental policies of modernizing elites in the postcolonial era; and how it has sustained itself as a platform for the re-construction of traditional hierarchies of power amidst the social stratification, communal identities, and spatial relations of Botswana in the twentieth century.

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