The Anglo-Zulu War

The History and Legacy of the British Empire’s Conflict with the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Colin Fluxman

“He is Shaka the unshakeable,

Thunderer-while-sitting, son of Menzi

He is the bird that preys on other birds,

The battle-axe that excels over other battle-axes in sharpness,

He is the long-strided pursuer, son of Ndaba,

Who pursued the sun and the moon.

He is the great hubbub like the rocks of Nkandla

Where elephants take shelter

When the heavens frown...” (A Zulu song)

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history.

In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event - known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 - galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa.

The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would granted without evidence of a practical occupation, and the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader, a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty.

Thus began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of chartered companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets, and alcohol. Having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, they began establishing boundaries of future European African colonies.

The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, intimidate an already broken society, and play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade.

There were some exceptions to this, however, and the most notable was the Zulu Kingdom - a centralized monarchy of enormous military prowess that would require a full-fledged war for the British to pacify. At the height of its power, in the southern part of Africa, the Zulu could rely on an army of 40,000 warriors, presenting a formidable obstacle to the designs of the British, who eventually engaged in a full-scale conflict with the Zulu due to their own geopolitical concerns.

When the fighting started at the beginning of 1879, British military leader Lord Chelmsford assured, “'If I am called upon to conduct operations against them, I shall strive to be in a position to show them how hopelessly inferior they are to us in fighting power, altho' numerically stronger.”

Less than 10 days later, Chelmsford had lost nearly 33 percent of his fighting force at the Battle of Isandlwana. From that point forward, the British began to take the Zulu more seriously, and over the next half year, they subdued the Zulu nation.

The military conflict helped immortalize the Zulu in the minds of Westerners, but their history was far from finished in 1879. The Zulu persevered, only to suffer under the depredations of South Africa’s apartheid system, but they also outlasted that, and even today, they remain the largest ethnic group in South Africa.

©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors