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A. T. Bryant and ‘The Wars of Shaka’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

John Wright
John Wright*
Affiliation:
University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg
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Extract

Olden Times in Zululand and Natal …depends primarily on tribal lore garnered during four decades of exhaustive interviews with native elders.…[I]t is safe to say [Bryant's] work will never be exceeded. Almost everything published on the subject since depends on him.…

This paper needs to be read against the background of the critique which has gradually been gathering force over the last half-dozen years or so of the concept of the mfecane. By the mfecane is meant the idea that in the 1820s much of the eastern half of southern Africa was thrown into turmoil by a series of wars and population migrations set in motion by the explosive expansion of the Zulu state under Shaka. Ever since Theal first popularized it in the late nineteenth century, this idea has remained one of the bedrock concepts around which the history of southern Africa in the later eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century has been written. The term mfecane itself did not become widely used until as recently as 1966, when, in his widely influential book, The Zulu Aftermath, Omer-Cooper repackaged what had previously been called “the wars of Shaka” for an emerging Africanist readership. Since then the concept of the mfecane has permeated the literature, both popular and academic, inside and outside southern Africa, to the point where it is regarded as a fixed fact of the sub-continent's history.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 409 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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References

Notes

1. Morris, Donald, The Washing of the Spears (London, 1966), 618.Google Scholar

2. Omer-Cooper, J. D., The Zulu Aftermath: a Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London, 1966).Google Scholar

3. Cobbing, Julian, “The Case Against the mfecane,” unpublished paper, University of Cape Town, 1983Google Scholar; “The Case Against the mfecane,” unpublished paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 1984; “The Myth of the mfecane,” unpublished paper, University of Durban-Westville, 1987; “Jettisoning the mfecane (with Perestroika),” University of the Witwatersrand, 1988; “The mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo,” JAH, 29 (1988), 487–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Grasping the Nettle: the Slave Trade and the Early Zulu,” unpublished paper, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1990.Google Scholar

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6. Bryant, A. T., Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London, 1929)Google Scholar (henceforth cited as OT).

7. The argument that follows is set out in more detail in Wright, J. B., “The Dynamics of Power and Conflict in the Thukela-Mzimkhulu region in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries: a Critical Reconstruction” (Ph.D., University of the Witwatersrand, 1990), chapter 3.Google Scholar

8. OT, 138.

9. Ibid., 138-39, 150, 253, 347-48, 357, 368-69.

10. Ibid., 150, 347, 357-58.

11. Ibid., 150, 347, 358.

12. Ibid., 253.

13. Ibid., 53-58.

14. Ibid., 267.

15. Ibid., 268.

16. Ibid., 267-72.

17. Ibid., 376-80, 409, 491, 551. The word “confederacy” first occurs on page 377.

18. Ibid., 555.

19. Ibid., 409, 507, 510-14, 520-23.

20. Ibid., 503, 555-57.

21. Ibid., 139-40, 557.

22. Ibid., 254, 491-92, 525, 530, 532, 535.

23. Ibid., 537, 538-40, 545, 552-53, 554.

24. Ibid., vii.

25. See the essay entitled “A Sketch of the Origin and Early History of the Zulu People,” which Bryant published as a preface to his A Zulu-English Dictionary (Pietermaritzburg, 1905), 12*–66*Google Scholar, and the series of articles published in the newspaper Izindaba Zabantu from 1910 to 1913, which were reprinted in Bryant, A. T., A History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Tribes (Cape Town, 1964)Google Scholar (henceforth cited as HZ).

26. Report and Proceedings…of the Government Commission on Native Laws and Customs, Cape of Good Hope Blue Book, G. 4.-'83, part II (Cape Town, 1968)Google Scholar (reprint of the 1st edition, 1883), 415-20. The succession of what Shepstone was the first to call “waves” of devastation is outlined on 416-17.

27. Correspondence Relating to Granting to Natives in Natal of Documentary Tribal Titles to Land, Sessional Papers Nos. 22 and 23 of the Natal Legislative Council, 1890 (Pietermaritzburg [?], n.d. [1890?]), 118–29Google Scholar; Brownlee, F., ed., The Transkeian Native Territories: Historical Records (Lovedale, 1923), 82–91.Google Scholar

28. OT, 91.

29. The despatch (no. 34, Scott to Newcastle, 26 February 1864) and its enclosures (minus maps) were published as Sessional Paper no. 23 of the Natal Legislative Council, 1890, in Correspondence, 52-136.

30. The document appears in Correspondence, 95-117. It was first published under a slightly different title in Bird, John, ed., Annals of Natal (2 vols.: Pietermaritzburg, 1888), 1: 124–53.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 54-55.

32. Ibid.

33. Natal Archives, Theophilus Shepstone Papers, vol. 89, 89-154.

34. Ibid., 149.

35. Shepstone, , “Historic Sketch,” 420.Google Scholar

36. See his attributions of individual histories in Shepstone Papers, vol. 89, 103-46.

37. Bird, , Annals, 1: 153.Google Scholar

38. Correspondence, 54.

39. Grout's evidence to the Harding Commission, i.e., the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Past and Present State of the Kafirs in the District of Natal, was published in the Natal Government Gazette, no. 215, 18 January 1853. It includes information on his sources. See also the comments in Grout, Lewis, The Autobiography of the Rev. Lewis Grout (Brattleboro, Vt., [1905?]), 26–27.Google Scholar

40. Natal Archives, Garden Papers, list of “Aboriginal tribes,” 826-83.

41. Garden Papers, 1198, letter from Perrin to Garden, 9 September [1853]; Natal Blue Book, 1854, 150.Google Scholar

42. Fynn's evidence was published in the Natal Government Gazette, no. 221, 1 March 1853.

43. Correspondence, 87-88.

44. Shepstone, , “Historic Sketch,” 416–18.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., 416.

46. See note 30 above.

47. In his Dictionary, 39*-49*.

48. For Shepttone's use of the term “confederacy” see Bird, , Annals, 1: 131, 132, 136, 146, 147, 149Google Scholar; Shepstone, , “Historic Sketch,” 417.Google Scholar

49. Bryant, , Dictionary, 39*, 48*.Google Scholar

50. HZ, 35, 81.

51. Ibid., 40, 41, 69.

52. HZ, 45.

53. Ibid., 25.

54. In OT the flight of the Ngwane is dated on 136, 150, 347, 368, 377; that of the Thembu on 253, 369, 376, 419, 55; that of the Chunu on 267, 376, 519, 548; and that of the confederacy on 380, 409, 551, 552.

55. Ayliff, John and Whiteside, Joseph, History of the Abambo (Cape Town, 1962)Google Scholar (reprint of 1st edition, 1912).

56. Webster, “Ayliff, Whiteside.”

57. Shooter, Joseph, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London, 1857), 216Google Scholar; Holden, W. C., The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (London, 1866), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ellenberger, D. F. and Macgregor, J. C., History of the Basuto Ancient and Modern (London, 1912), 119, 130Google Scholar; Theal, G. M., ed., Basutoland Records (3 vols.: Cape Town, 1883), 2: vi, vii.Google Scholar

58. An Fingo, Aged [Mhlanga, Platje], “A Story of Native Wars,” Cape Monthly Magazine (January - June 1877), 248–52Google Scholar; Mehlomakhulu, , “Statement of Mathlomahulu,” Cape Monthly Magazine (July - December 1880), 163–64Google Scholar; Moloja, , “The Story of the ‘Fetcani Horde’,” Cape Quarterly Review, 1 (1882), 267–75.Google Scholar

59. Stuart, John, ed., uBaxoxele (London, 1924), 30–31.Google Scholar

60. Wright, , “Dynamics of Power,” 118–19.Google Scholar

61. Stuart's original notes of Lugubhu's evidence on this topic are to be found in the James Stuart Collection (Killie Campbell Africana Library), File 57, nbk, 14, pp. 31-46. A translated and annotated rendering appears in Webb, C. de B. and Wright, J. B., eds., The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples (Pietermaritzburg, 1976), 284–87.Google Scholar

62. Wright, , “Dynamics of Power,” 122–26, 127, 133.Google Scholar

63. Shepstone, , “Historic Sketch,” 417.Google Scholar

64. OT, 376.

65. Shepstone, , “Historic Sketch,” 417–18.Google Scholar

66. OT, 252, 376.

67. Ibid., 137-39.

68. Ibid., 252.

69. See esp. chapter 64 of OT. The quotation is on 171.

70. OT, 555.

71. Ibid., 551.

72. These two instances concern the expeditions sent inthe early 1820s against the Chunu on the Mzimkhulu and against the Ngwane on the upper Thukela.

73. OT, 507, 511, 521, 523, 530, 540, 545.

74. Ibid., 58, 248, 271, 348, 377, 410, 551-52, 559.

75. Ibid., 259-60.

76. Ibid., 405, 409-12.

77. Ibid., 540.

78. These policies are analyzed in Wright, “Dynamics of power,” chapters 5 and 6.