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The Basotho nation was forged in the early 19th century when King Moshoeshoe I gathered scattered Sotho-speaking clans, displaced by the upheavals of the Mfecane, into a single kingdom based at the mountain stronghold of Thaba Bosiu. Moshoeshoe’s diplomacy secured British protection in 1868, preserving Basotho independence through to Lesotho’s founding as a modern state.