Basotho People And Globalization

This research paper will examine the Basotho people and how certain aspects of globalization may have impacted their traditional religion and their economics. This topic engages with and contrasts the white supremacist ideal that Africa has a monolithic culture and that its cultures are far removed from “Western” influences. This topic will be approached by first briefly analyzing the Basotho people’s history, their religion, and their economic structure before substantial contact with “Western” influences and globalization. There will be an emphasis on how these aspects of the Basotho people’s culture changed after globalization commenced and an attempt to determine whether the Basotho people are agents or victims in the globalization process. …show more content…
Missionaries started to set up missions with different peoples throughout the country. However, tensions between the Basotho people and the Afrikaner, people of mixed European descent who spoke Dutch, after they settled in the Free State province to the west of Lesotho. In order to prepare for any potential conflict, King Moshoeshoe I reached out to missionaries and asked that they live among the Basotho people. By doing this, Moshoeshoe I hoped that he and his people would have easier access to guns to help protect themselves against the Europeans. New concepts of religion and Western thought were introduced to the Basotho people by these missionaries. Three missionaries from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, Thomas Arabousset, Constant Gosselin, and Eugene Casalis, were positioned in Morija, where a substantial amount of work was done toward the creation of an orthography for the Sesotho …show more content…
They were agents in the globalization process because they had agency and used that agency to benefit in the form of increased protection from their opponents when they welcomed the European missionaries. Although Lesotho’s religion drastically changed from what it was before contact, a positive or negative attribute cannot be easily attached to this development in this research. It would appear that this area’s description would largely be based upon the onions of the Basotho people. Although the Basotho people were initially agents in the globalization process, after analyzing their economic structure and its development, it has become apparent that they have been harmed in this process and have become victims of it. Because of the World Bank and its loyalties to making a profit (primarily off of the bodies of the Basotho people), Lesotho has become heavily reliant on foreign aid and does not have the means or the agency to become economically