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Chapter 1 THE COMING OF THE WAR Peace and war ‘A curious phenomenon occurred 7th January,’ a Christian missionary in the Upper Umkomanzi Division wrote in 1878. ‘A bright star appeared near the moon at noonday, the sun shining brightly – Omen – The natives from this foretold the coming war with the Amazulu’.1 A year later the British and Zulu fought that war. The British, enjoying superior organization, technology and communications, brought the force of empire to bear and defeated and destroyed the Zulu kingdom. British motives in provoking the war ranged from political aggrandizement to economic exploitation, as was the case in most imperialist wars of the nineteenth century, but there was a defensive motive as well. The Zulu kingdom had emerged as a warfare state and as such posed a threat to the stability of southeastern Africa. That threat had to be removed. The war lasted nine months and had four phases. First, the British army invaded the Zulu country but retreated after a disastrous defeat at Isandlwana. Second, the British stood on the defensive . The imperial forces regrouped and were reinforced . The Zulu state gained no advantage from its temporary ascendancy. Third, the imperial army invaded the Zulu country again, and inflicted a severe defeat on the Zulu at Ulundi. Finally, the British pacified the country and captured the Zulu King, exiled him and broke up his kingdom into thirteen chiefdoms. The British launched their attacks on the Zulu kingdom from the colony of Natal, which bordered the Zulu country on the south and west. When the war began, Her Majesty’s subjects were all involved in it, however close by or distant from the actual fighting. The population of the Colony was estimated at that time to be 361 587, of whom only 26 654 were Europeans and some 16 999 were Indians. The great majority of people – 319 935 – were Africans.2 Why should Africans support Europeans against other Africans? Why should African chiefs support the Great Queen faraway against the Zulu King near by? For support the colonial power they did. They owed much to the British and little to the Zulu. The British had brought peace to a land ravaged by warfare, the source of which had been Zulu expansion . The British had introduced order to a land where there had been anarchy. The British did not kill people and steal their cattle, but the Zulu and their client peoples had done so.3 The Zulu people regarded themselves as superior to all others.4 So perhaps did the British, but they did not translate their superiority so directly into oppression. The British had established the Colony of Natal as an offshoot of the Cape Colony, that is, the more developed and extensive territory which formed the hinterland of their base at Cape Town, at the southern tip of Africa. British traders had been active on a small scale at Port Natal, but it was the intrusion of Dutch farmers into Natal that had obliged the British government to intervene in the region. These Dutch farmers had left the Cape and with it, they supposed, British rule. They had obtained from the Zulu King the cession of most of the land which Natal later encompassed. The Zulu King had distrusted them and sent his army to rout them out, but they had recovered from the blow and in turn defeated the Zulu. Then they had allied with and elevated a pretender to the Zulu throne, and claimed more land in compensation. The Dutch farmers laid claim to extensive tracts of land, but their government was largely nominal. It wielded little power after the wars of conquest. There was peace with the Zulu. The cessation of Zulu raids and of destructive marches of fugitive chiefdoms to escape the Zulu made the Dutch republic a haven. People who had lived there before or who saw advantage in doing so now came to settle. The Dutch feared they were being swamped – or would be swamped – by unwanted hordes. It was not a stable situation, irrespective of the peace. Moreover the Dutch were still British subjects, notwithstanding their putative secession from the empire. So the British government intervened in 1843, liquidated the Dutch republic of Natalia, and established the Colony of Natal in 1845.5 British rule was not followed by a massive immigration of Britons. In the first seven years less than five thousand came. The relatively small groups brought to settle did not do well...

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