DOCSLIB.ORG

University of California UCOP | 19Th Century Zulu

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
University of California UCOP | 19Th Century Zulu University of California UCOP | 19th century zulu [MUSIC PLAYING] When I came to the United States in the middle of the 1970s to undertake doctoral study in African history, it was a period of which there was considerable expectations and hope for Africa. The countries had become newly independent. We had people like Julius Nyerere in power in Tanzania, people who were talking about the need to develop African forms of democracy, to create new states that were different from those that had been run for the previous 100 years by European colonial authorities. It was also a period when there were great expectations and hopes for independence being extended to other parts of Africa that were still under the control of other European powers or whites-- whites in the case of Zimbabwe-- white settlers-- whites in the case of South Africa, where the apartheid government was still in place. But when I first came to the United States-- so countries that we now know as Angola or Mozambique were ruled by the Portuguese government, which still had them under colonial control and were notorious for the use of the secret police in controlling the people. But African historians at that time in the middle '70s-- as they had started doing in the 1960s-- had focused on developing ideas and research into African agency, focusing on what Africans had done for themselves rather than looking solely at what Europeans were doing to them, but wanting to look at what Africans were doing for themselves, and particularly trying to put that into a context in which historians would study the history of Africa before the arrival of Europeans in the late 19th century as a force of conquest. And there was a lot of concern about looking at African agency to see what they had done, how they had changed society, change it away from the idea that in some way African society was static and changeless, which is some of the ideas that you might see existing still in some of the stereotypical materials that I've discussed earlier in this class. But when I first came to do my graduate work, I was particularly interested in focusing on one individual, and that was King Shaka of the Zulu state. And if we look at this "what if" map that I showed you in an earlier class of Africa-- if Europeans had not come and conquered it in the late 19th century-- we can see here in this imaginary map based on what Africa was like at around about 1844 a place called [INAUDIBLE]. That's been put there by the African mapmaker. And that would be the Zulu Kingdom. Now, the Zulu Kingdom-- in the early part of the 19th century-- was a new political form. It had not existed there Now, the Zulu Kingdom-- in the early part of the 19th century-- was a new political form. It had not existed there before. It had not existed there in the 17th and 18th centuries, or at least not in the size and organization that existed in the early part of the 19th century. And one historian in particular, John Omer-Cooper, had made a remarkable piece of work when he had talked about the development of a revolution in Africa. And it's important that he used that word revolution-- he talked about revolutionary change in Africa-- because historians before that time had not talked about revolution as something that could happen in Africa. Small change, little change, but historians had often adopted the notion of staticness within Africa. And Omer-Cooper stressed the revolution. Now, this revolution was associated with one particular individual. We do not have any contemporary drawings of Shaka Zulu. We do not have anything that seems to be realistic. This drawing was made at approximately the same time and purports to be about Shaka. As to whether it actually is or not, that remains in some dispute. We do have drawings that were made at the time of Shaka's brother, Dingane. And this, in a sense, captures a different image of a Zulu Lord in the early 19th century. These are three images of Dingane in his dancing clothes, in his regular clothes. As you can see, quite a different portrayal of him than simply as the warrior that we see in this previous one. Well, when I came and started work on Shaka, what I was struck by was the amount of work that seemed to have been done about him, that people seemed to think that they knew a lot about Shaka. They wrote about him as though he was a barbarian king, a person who had conquered vast areas, but who-- I found in the literature that existed at the time-- described him as equivalent to Attila the Hun. He was sometimes described as a barbarian. He was described as a latent homosexual. He was described as being emasculated. He was described as being circumcised, as being uncircumcised, et cetera, et cetera. So as you can see, there was a fascination with Shaka, but also a whole amount of material that had been written in all sorts of different ways. And so what I did was focus on, what could we find out about Shaka? What would we know about him? You are going to read in the course of this class, the work that I wrote about Shaka and what I could find out about him. But the certain key features that I found when I investigated him was that much of the material that was available to historians in the 20th century had, in fact, been written by Europeans in the middle to later part of the 19th century. And they were the people who had created a lot of these images of barbarity, of ruthless killing, of a person who would kill you if you sneezed or coughed, and would do so-- and here we'll just show you a few items-- would do so by, say, taking a spear like this. This is a spear that was used in [INAUDIBLE] by the Zulu in the early 19th century-- that was used to stab people. But there were a lot of stories about how Shaka would execute people, especially by impaling them on their anus on a spear like this. What I found when I read the literature was, well, could I really find contemporary material that suggested-- from an African perspective-- that Shaka had been such a brutal king, that he had engaged in all of these acts, that he had, for example, executed all the old people in his kingdom, that he had caused the death of many people simply if they coughed out of turn or sneezed? And I found that it was extremely difficult to find that material. It didn't exist. It existed in the European accounts. But then when I looked closely at the European accounts, I could say that, well, it looks like there are about 30 or 40 different European accounts, but actually they copy from one another, sometimes without necessarily acknowledging that they were copying-- because they weren't always exact footnoters, like we should be right now when we quote our sources. And so what seemed to be a massive evidence from a multiplicity of sources, I found actually could be reduced to accounts that came from two individuals who visited Shaka in the 1820s and were there in the 1830s, but who had a particular point of view in mind in describing Shaka-- and that is that they were interested in having the British go and intervene in southern Africa to forcibly take land and to take it away from the Zulu so that the British would be in control. And thereby, with British control, traders-- which is what these two individuals were-- would then get a safe place for them to carry out their trade so that they could make a larger profit than they could have by working with Shaka, because Shaka hadn't prevented them from trading there. I mean, the fact that they provide accounts of their interaction with him, of their negotiations with him, demonstrated that he was extremely welcoming to them. He did not treat them badly. He did not threaten them with killing or anything like that. But they were interested for their own business interests in having British extend rule there, because the idea was that if the British had rule in that area, they could get goods at a cheaper price than they would get them if they had to negotiate with an independent African ruler. So there we have the development of those ideas about Shaka. And in particular, I'll quote from one piece of evidence that comes from correspondence that was exchanged between the author of one of these books and another author at the time, where he was advised-- with regard to Shaka-- to make him out as bloodthirsty as you can. And I think this is something we want to keep in mind that when we look at material that is produced and disseminated in the 20th century, are we looking at material that is actually true, is based on fact, even when it says it is? When, in fact, we might say, well, no, we've got to question the facts. We've got to question whether, in fact, this is based on fact. fact, this is based on fact. What we do know-- apart from the fact that Shaka did not necessarily look like that first image, nor did he necessarily look like his brother-- but he probably wore some of the same clothing as his brother, a whole range of things.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 01 Shamase FM.Fm
    1 Relations between the Zulu people of Emperor Mpande and the Christian missionaries, c.1845-c.1871 Maxwell Z. Shamase 1 Department of History, University of Zululand [email protected] Abstract During Emperor Mpande's reign (1840-1872), following the deposition of his half-brother Dingane in 1840, the Zulu people mostly adhered to traditional norms and values, believing that the spirits of the dead live on. Ancestral veneration and the worship of the Supreme Being called Umvelinqangi were pre-eminent and the education of children was merely informal, based on imitation and observation. This worldview faced new challenges with the advent of Christianity and the arrival of Christian missionaries at Port Natal between 1845 and 1871. The strategy of almost all Christian missionaries was premised on winning the Zulu people en masse to Christianity through Mpande’s court. The doctrines preached by the missionaries disputed the fundamental ethical, metaphysical and social ideas of the Zulu people. Mpande, however, earnestly requested that at least one missionary reside in the vicinity of his palace. Nothing could deter Mpande’s attempts to use missionary connections to keep Colonial threats of invasion in check. While the Zulu people were devoid of organised religion which might have proved a bulwark against the Christianisation process, Mpande’s acceptance of the missionaries could be said to have been mainly strategic. He could not display bellicose tendencies while still at an embryonic stage of consolidating his authority. This paper gives an exposition of the nature and extent of relations between the Christian missionaries and the Zulu empire of Mpande.
    [Show full text]
  • “Born out of Shaka's Spear”: the Zulu Iklwa and Perceptions of Military
    Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2020). “Born out of Shaka’s spear”: The Zulu Iklwa and Perceptions of Military Revolution in the Nineteenth Century Jacob Ivey, Ph.D. Florida Institute of Technology In May 2010, anticipating South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup, the city of Durban decided to make a dramatic addition to the newly opened King Shaka International Airport. Officials unveiled a statue of the Zulu king Shaka kaSenzangakhona, known popularly as “Shaka Zulu.” Shaka, founder of the Zulu nation in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, had since his death in 1828 become perhaps one of the most famous South Africans in history next to Nelson Mandela. The Zulu king had facilitated the creation of the Zulu kingdom during the early nineteenth century through what has been described as a “military revolution” that influenced the historic arc of the whole region. However, unlike the traditional image of Shaka with shield and iklwa, or short stabbing-spear made famous by the Zulu king, he was presented outside the airport terminal as unarmed, surrounded by Nguni cattle. This revelation created a major controversy in June when Goodwill Zwelithin kaBhekuzulu, Isilo (King) of the Zulus of South Africa, expressed his displeasure, arguing, “it made Shaka look like a herd boy, rather than the hunter and warrior he was.”1 Shaka, evidently, was not Shaka without his spear. If there is one indelible image of the Zulu nation, it is the iklwa. Literally “stabbing” through the title graphic of the mini-series Shaka Zulu (1986) and a key element of the imagery of the Inkatha Freedom Party, the short stabbing spear of the Zulu is frequently offered as part of the military genius of Shaka.
    [Show full text]
  • Early History of South Africa
    THE EARLY HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA EVOLUTION OF AFRICAN SOCIETIES . .3 SOUTH AFRICA: THE EARLY INHABITANTS . .5 THE KHOISAN . .6 The San (Bushmen) . .6 The Khoikhoi (Hottentots) . .8 BLACK SETTLEMENT . .9 THE NGUNI . .9 The Xhosa . .10 The Zulu . .11 The Ndebele . .12 The Swazi . .13 THE SOTHO . .13 The Western Sotho . .14 The Southern Sotho . .14 The Northern Sotho (Bapedi) . .14 THE VENDA . .15 THE MASHANGANA-TSONGA . .15 THE MFECANE/DIFAQANE (Total war) Dingiswayo . .16 Shaka . .16 Dingane . .18 Mzilikazi . .19 Soshangane . .20 Mmantatise . .21 Sikonyela . .21 Moshweshwe . .22 Consequences of the Mfecane/Difaqane . .23 Page 1 EUROPEAN INTERESTS The Portuguese . .24 The British . .24 The Dutch . .25 The French . .25 THE SLAVES . .22 THE TREKBOERS (MIGRATING FARMERS) . .27 EUROPEAN OCCUPATIONS OF THE CAPE British Occupation (1795 - 1803) . .29 Batavian rule 1803 - 1806 . .29 Second British Occupation: 1806 . .31 British Governors . .32 Slagtersnek Rebellion . .32 The British Settlers 1820 . .32 THE GREAT TREK Causes of the Great Trek . .34 Different Trek groups . .35 Trichardt and Van Rensburg . .35 Andries Hendrik Potgieter . .35 Gerrit Maritz . .36 Piet Retief . .36 Piet Uys . .36 Voortrekkers in Zululand and Natal . .37 Voortrekker settlement in the Transvaal . .38 Voortrekker settlement in the Orange Free State . .39 THE DISCOVERY OF DIAMONDS AND GOLD . .41 Page 2 EVOLUTION OF AFRICAN SOCIETIES Humankind had its earliest origins in Africa The introduction of iron changed the African and the story of life in South Africa has continent irrevocably and was a large step proven to be a micro-study of life on the forwards in the development of the people.
    [Show full text]
  • Een-Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain
    Een-Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain TIMOTHY PARSONS British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non-western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work.The partisans of empire also romanticised non-western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden-Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden-Powell’s imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo’s crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ‘martial tribe’ in the imagination of the British public. Baden-Powell romanticised the Zulus’ discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden-Powell’s appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influ- ence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting’s romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden-Powell’s organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden-Powell that ‘tribal’ Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age.
    [Show full text]
  • FUGITIVE QUEENS: Amakhosikazi and the Continuous Evolution Of
    FUGITIVE QUEENS: Amakhosikazi and the Continuous Evolution of Gender and Power in KwaZulu-Natal (1816-1889) by CAELLAGH D. MORRISSEY A THESIS Presented to the Department of History and International Studies and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts or Science December 2015 An Abstract of the Thesis of Caellagh Morrissey for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Department of History and International Studies to be taken December 2015 Title: Fugitive Queens: Amakhosikazi and the Evolution of Gender and Power in KwaZulu-Natal (1816-1889) Professor Lindsay F. Braun Amakhosikazi (elite women) played a vital role within the social, economic, and political reality of the Zulu pre-colonial state. However, histories have largely categorized them as accessory to the lives of powerful men. Through close readings of oral traditions, travelogues, and government documentation, this paper discusses the spaces in which the amakhosikazi exhibited power, and tracks changes in the social position of queen mothers, as well as some members of related groups of elite women, from the early years of the Zulu chiefdom in the 1750s up until the 1887 annexation by Britain and their crucial intervention in royal matters in 1889. The amakhosika=i can be seen operating in a complex social space wherein individual women accessed power through association to political clans, biological and economic reproduction, manipulation, and spiritual influence. Women's access to male power sources changed through both internal political shifts and external pressures. but generally increased in the first half of the 1800s, and the declined over time and with the fracturing of Zulu hegemony.
    [Show full text]
  • Determination on Amazulu Paramountcy
    DETERMINATION ON AMAZULU PARAMOUNTCY I N D E X NO. DESCRIPTION PAGE NO. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Constitutional Provisions 1 1.2 Establishment of the Commission 2 1.3 Functions of the Commission 2 - 5 2. FOCUS 5 - 6 3. METHODOLOGY 6 - 7 4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 8 - 30 5. THE CUSTOMARY LAW OF SUCCESSION 5.1 Succession to the Kingship of amaZulu 31 - 32 6. IMPACT OF LEGISLATION 6.1 Colonial Era 32 - 35 6.2 Apartheid Era and Homeland Era 35 - 38 6.3 Post-Apartheid Era 38 - 40 7. CURRENT STATUS 41 8. DETERMINATION 8.1 Issues to be Determined 42 8.2 Analysis of Issues 42 - 43 8.3 Analysis of Evidence 43 - 46 9. CONCLUSION 46 - 47 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS (a) Chapter 12 (Sections 211 and 212) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 106 of 1996 (“the Constitution”) provides for the recognition of the institution of traditional leadership, its status and role according to customary law, subject to democratic principles. It is common cause, however, that over the years the institution of traditional leadership has been undermined, distorted and eroded. (b) Some of the main causes of this distortion were imperialism and colonization; repressive laws, in particular, the Black Administration Act 38 of 1927 (“the Black Administration Act”) and Apartheid laws which provided for the creation of territorial authorities, self-governing states and pseudo- independent enclaves. 1.2 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMMISSION 2 (a) In order to restore the dignity of this institution, the State President of the Republic of South Africa appointed a Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims.
    [Show full text]
  • Original Paper Contextualising Participant Factions in the Second Zulu Civil War of 1856 and It's Consequences up to 1861
    World Journal of Education and Humanities ISSN 2687-6760 (Print) ISSN 2687-6779 (Online) Vol. 3, No. 1, 2021 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjeh Original Paper Contextualising Participant Factions in the Second Zulu Civil War of 1856 and It’s Consequences up to 1861 Hebert Sihle Ntuli1* & Fundeka Sikhosana1 1 Department of History, University of Zululand, South Africa * Hebert Sihle Ntuli, Department of History, University of Zululand, South Africa Received: December 2, 2020 Accepted: December 20, 2020 Online Published: December 28, 2020 doi:10.22158/wjeh.v3n1p63 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/wjeh.v3n1p63 Abstract The Second Zulu Civil War of 1856, commonly known as the Battle of Ndondakusuka, has been the subject of a number of historical interpretations. Different scholars give different accounts of the battle. Most historians differ on the root causes of the battle. Some attribute it to white imperialists who manipulated scenes and used the weakness of King Mpande to cause the war. According to this opinion, the Natal government entered the succession issue in an attempt to provide itself with a new “reserve” of land between the Thukela and Mhlathuze Rivers. Other sources point King Mpande as the one responsible for the clash between Princes Cetshwayo and Mbuyazi. The land issue and power also played a role in the outbreak of hostilities between princes. It is therefore apparent that different factions played a role in the outbreak of this war. So, this paper aims at contextualising various role-players towards that conflict and consequences thereafter. Keywords civilwar, Mpande, Cetshwayo, Mbuyazi, Ndondakusuka 1.
    [Show full text]
  • The Strange Story and Remarkable Adventures of King Cetshwayo's
    The Strange Story and Remarkable Adventures of King Cetshwayo’s Cup Ian Knight __________________________________________________________________________________________ On 5 October 1998, a ceremony was held on the site of King Dingane’s royal residence, emGungundhlovu, to inaugurate an interesting new Zulu heritage project. Amafa KwaZulu Natali, the KwaZulu/Natal heritage body, announced its intention to acquire the farmland that comprises the emaKhosini valley, south of the White Mfolozi River. This is the heartland of the old Zulu kingdom; emaKhosini means ‘the place of the kings’ and this is where the original Zulu chiefdom lived, and where the ancestors of the royal house are buried. King Shaka’s father, Senzangakhona, lived and is buried there, and Shaka spent part of his childhood there. Later, Dingane established eMgungundlovu there – surely the greatest and most magnificent of all the Zulu royal homesteads. The intention of the project is to buy up the farmland which comprises the valley, and turn it into a historical reserve – as has happened at Isandlwana, for example. The emaKhosini project is more ecologically challenging, however, in that the intention is to stock the reserve with both game, and traditional Zulu Nguni cattle. Local people will also be allowed to practise a limited amount of traditional agriculture within the reserve. The idea is that the emaKhosini will carry something of the traditions of Zulu land use forward into the twenty-first century, and therefore become something of a loving ecological museum. So far about 6,000 hectares of land have been acquired, and fund-raising is in progress to enable Amafa to purchase the rest.
    [Show full text]
  • Shaka the Great*
    Historia 54,1, Mei/May 2009, pp 159-179 Shaka the Great* Jeff Peires** Among several welcome signs that the gloom and doom which has for too long enveloped South African historiography is finally beginning to lift,1 one ominous portent continues to threaten. As Christopher Saunders recently put it, “much of the new work is narrow and specialized and of limited general significance”.2 History cannot flourish in the absence of debate, and the louder the debate, the more people are likely to join in. The South African historiographical landscape, however, still resembles that encountered by the British popular historian, Philip Ziegler, when he embarked on his study of the medieval Black Death, “rival historians, each established in his fortress of specialized knowledge, waiting to destroy the unwary trespasser”.3 So long as we continue to huddle in our strongholds, we will never engage. There are too many foxes in the South African historiographical world, and not enough hedgehogs.4 Today therefore, I put on my hedgehog suit and venture out to KwaZulu Natal, about which I truthfully know very little. If I die in battle, I can always scurry back to my Eastern Cape fortress and resume life as a fox. Besides which, if others follow my example, my sacrifice will not have been in vain. The decline of Shaka The conventional image of Shaka as a great African leader, a kind of black Napoleon, was adopted wholesale and unreflectively by the liberal historians of the Oxford History School, who sought to counter the racist assumptions of the colonial and apartheid eras by portraying African history as dynamic, constructive and independent of European influence.
    [Show full text]
  • African Traditional Government: a Case Study of Shaka the Zulu
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE): E-Journals Historical Research Letter www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3178 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0964 (Online) Vol.30, 2016 African Traditional Government: A Case Study of Shaka the Zulu Abiodun Adesegun, Ph.D * Adetola Adejo School of Education and Humanities, Babcock University, Ilishan Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria Abstract Bantu is a general name given to a vast group of peoples who speak several hundred different languages that can be shown to be related to one another. The Bantu who settled in South Africa belonged to a branch of Bantu peoples known as the Southern Bantu. They can be divided into a number of groups by reference to their languages. The east-coast strip was the home of numerous tribes belonging to the Nguni-speaking group. By the 18 th century they occupied the coastal area as far as the Great Fish River and were beginning to settle to the Southwest of that river in a land known as Zuurveld. The Bantu were organized in tribes, each of which consisted of one central clan, though it may contain members of other clans as well. The advent of Europeans on African soil did not meet a vacuum. Africans had systems of government that served them well. This paper investigated the rise of Shaka, the Zulu and his contribution to African traditional government that became a formidable obstacle to British imperialism in Southern Africa in the 19 th century. Keywords: administration, military, despot, and loyalty 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Zulu Strategic and Tactical Options in the Face of the British Invasion of January 1879
    Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 28, Nr 1, 1998. http://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za ZULU STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL OPTIONS IN THE FACE OF THE BRITISH INVASION OF JANUARY 1879 PROF JOHN LABAND Department of Historical Studies, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg Until recent years, historians of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 made little attempt to unravel the strategic and tact~cal options of the Zulu preparing to face the British invasion of their ~!I)gdom. The inadequacy of such an approach was epitomised in the dismissive comments of Donald Morris, whose book, The Washing of the Spears, first published in 1966 and reprinted regularly thereafter, has remained the most popular and influential book on the war. When mentioning Zulu strategic planning, for example, he had nothing to say except that the Zulu king, Cetshwayo kaMpande, had 'no clear plan in mind,.1 It was twenty years ago that I first began to research this aspect of the conflict. I have continued to refine my original conclusions,2 which other historians of the war have begun to incorporate into their work.3 What my investigations have made quite evident is that the Zulu were indeed aware of the strategic options facing them in 1879, and were conscious of how these were determined by their habitual method of waging war. Consequently, when in January 1879 King Cetshwayo sent out his armies to confront the invader, he did so (pace Donald Morris) with a very clear idea of what he hoped they would achieve militarily, and what effect this was calculated to have on an acceptable termination to the conflict.
    [Show full text]
  • The Anatomy of the Zulu Army: from Shaka to Cetshwayo, 1818-1879'
    H-SAfrica Etherington on Knight, 'The Anatomy of the Zulu Army: From Shaka to Cetshwayo, 1818-1879' Review published on Sunday, October 1, 2000 Ian Knight. The Anatomy of the Zulu Army: From Shaka to Cetshwayo, 1818-1879. London: Stackpole Books, 1999. 282 pp. $44.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-85367-213-2. Reviewed by Norman A. Etherington (Department of History, University of Western Australia ) Published on H-SAfrica (October, 2000) This is a reprint of the first Greenhill cloth edition of 1995 and appears in a series dedicated to military history. The author is not an academic historian but he writes well and has consulted the leading authorities on Zulu history. He has also made good use of the invaluable James Stuart Archive of translated oral traditions published by the University of Natal Press (whose 5th volume will be out soon). After a brief opening discussion of the emergence of the Zulu kingdom, he tries to set the Zulu army in the wider context of society at large. This is no easy task for a conventional military historian; Knight deserves credit for making sense of a great deal of disparate evidence. The regiments (amabutho) were not a standing army but a citizen force called out when the king required them. Becoming a man involved induction into a regiment. Marriage could not occur until the king permitted the veterans of a particular regiment to put on the head ring (isicoco) and go out to seek wives. In giving a lucid account of these rites of passage, Knight falls into the usual trap of writing in a timeless ethnographical present - as though nothing much changed over the course of the sixty years cited in the title.
    [Show full text]