The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux by James O. Gump (review)

BookReviews 145 Book Reviews James 0. Gump. The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 178 and illustrations. In putting forward the case for comparative studies, Robin Winks once stated that "put succinctly and in a cliche, he who only his own country knows, knows not his country" (The Relevance of Canadian History: U. S. and Imperial Perspectives. Toronto: MacMillan, 1979: 33). But despite this and other pleas for historians to broaden their context of inquiry and look beyond their regional specialties-particularly in the study of nineteenthcentury encounters between high technology and lesser technology societiesfew scholars have ventured in this direction. This is likely because not many feel themselves to be adequately in command of the history of two or more regions in order to apply this method effectively. Efforts at comparative history more often consist of paired essays by two regional specialists, or of unsatisfactory brief pages tacked to the end of specialized regional studies that point out parallels with and differences from other locales. James 0. Gump, of the Department of History of the University of San Diego, has written a genuinely comparative history of two indigenous societies, the Zulu and the Sioux (specifically the Lakota), and their confrontations/relations with imperial agents and white settlers in frontier contexts. Drawing upon the work of Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson in The Frontier in History: North America and South Africa Compared ryale University Press, 1981), Gump similarly defines frontier as a "zone of interaction between two or more previously distinct peoples, and the process by which relations among peoples begin, develop and crystallize" (2). Gump sees these frontier encounters as part of a global pattern of intensified conflict over land, labour, and resources. A major purpose of Gump's study is to issue another challenge to American "exceptional ism," and to point out that the United States' violent encounter with the Sioux "cannot be dismissed as a tragic interlude peculiar to the American frontiering experience" (137). Presumably 146 Canadian Review of American Studies the study will also serve to qualify any assumptions that might be made about the uniqueness of the encounter between the Zulu and the British. A first challenge of comparative history is to locate comparable societies, problems, or events and in this regard Gump has done a remarkable job as there are startling parallels. Both the Zulu and the Sioux were expansive and aggressive societies that underwent profound transformations in the centuries prior to western contact, developed highly effective military systems, and gained hegemony in their respective regions during the nineteenth century. Both societies stood as barriers to the forces of industrialist capitalist expansion at about the same time. Gump sees the course and timing of events as determined not only by these externalities, but by the diplomatic, military, and economic interests of the Zulu and the Sioux who are depicted as political actors in their own right, and not pawns to outside forces. Drawing upon Ronald Robinson's model of the collaborator, Gump argues that in each society powerful rulers chose to cooperate and served as major mediators with the United States and Great Britain. In some cases they gained significant concessions but any intercultural bonds forged in the 1860s began to unravel in the 1870s. They negotiated as well as resisted, and at Little Bighorn (1876) and Isandhlwana (1879) the indigenous societies scored significant military victories over their opponents. These victories proved Phyrric and transient however, as both societies experienced a rapid transition to dispossession and marginality. The Zulu, like the Sioux, surrendered much of their original territory, and both were the subjects of deliberate efforts to destroy traditional leadership and to promote factionalism to keep people amenable to white authority. Gump also considers the similar ways in which the Sioux and the Zulu came to be popularly presented in the press, literature, and later in film. Both Little Bighorn and Isandhlwana were converted into legends, and the Sioux and the Zulu became fixed in popular culture as the quintessential 'noble savages.' Gump perceives significant differences however at the heart of the British and American imperial missions. The Americans...