HISTORY OF THE BASUTO, ANCIENT AND MODERN

Prelims xxii + 396pp, frontispiece, fold-out map, fold-out genealogical table of tribal chiefs. Original blue ribbed cloth with gilt titleing to the spine. The top of the spine and the corners of the covers are worn. There is light foxing, particularly to the end papers and one chapter - the chapter on Bushmen - has some underlining. The pages have tanned. 

Compiled by D. Fred. Ellenberger, V.D.M. in French at the request of the Commissioner of Basutoland H. C. Sloley. Translated into English by J. C. MacGregor, Assistant Commissioner. It was published under the Auspices of the Basutoland Government

"History of the Basuto, Ancient and Modern", compiled by the French missionary David-Frédéric Ellenberger during the second half of the nineteenth century, remains the seminal ethnohistory of the people who today constitute the population of Lesotho. In 2015 the full Ellenberger Archive consisting of approximately 1,500 original documents, which were used to write this book, was digitised by the Endangered Archives Programme in partnership with the University of The Witwatersrand.

Ellenberger began collecting the materials in his archive in 1866 and gathered oral histories and genealogies until 1905. Thanks to bequests from Ellenberger and his descendants, Morija Museum and Archives (MMA, Lesotho) possesses the complete archive of History, reflecting the total process of assembling, editing and publishing this work. This archive offers a rare window onto nineteenth-century Lesotho and colonial knowledge networks. The testimonies that Ellenberger recorded, detail nineteenth-century Basotho traditions and sensibilities, and how these were changing throughout the colonial period.

Source: https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP845