In Our Time - The Zulu Nation's Rise and Fall

Episode Date: April 15, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and fall of the Zulu Nation.At the beginning of the 19th century, the Zulus were a small pastoral community of a bare few thousand people in the eastern part of what is now South Africa. Their territory was limited to about ten square miles.But within a decade, led by their warrior king, Shaka, they had managed to carve out an empire with a population of many tens of thousands.Shaka was a skilled politician, successfully co-opting many neighbouring peoples into his kingdom as his conquests advanced its borders.He remains best known as a world-class military strategist, who deployed new weapons, and a devastatingly effective technique of encircling enemy troops.But the ground for the Zulus' breathtaking expansion was shaped in part by the destabilising advance of European settlers.It eventually brought the Zulu into confrontation both with the Afrikaners, as at the Battle of Blood River in 1838, and with the British.In the mid-19th century, the Zulu and the British achieved a sustained period of peaceful co-existence.But, especially after the discovery of diamonds began to transform the southern African economy, British priorities changed, and they began to push for a single confederation of the various provinces and colonies.Zululand's independence became an obstacle, and in 1879 the British invaded.On 22 January 1879, the Zulu were unable to overrun a tiny garrison of invaders at Rorke's Drift.Yet on the same day, at the Battle of Isandhlwana, they inflicted a shocking defeat on the well-armed forces of the British Empire - all the more impressive given that the Zulu soldiers were predominantly armed with spears.Nonetheless, the British invasion of Zululand was ultimately successful, and precipitated first annexation, then the kingdom's absorption into the province of Natal (today, KwaZulu-Natal).During their heyday and in the wake of their decline alike, the Zulu became the subject of much myth-making.To the British, the 'Black Napoleon' figure of Shaka, and the vivid image of a proud warrior race, made the Zulu an object of admiration, fear, and appalled fascination, even as the Army moved to subjugate them.And in the decades since the demise of their independent kingdom, the triumphs of the 19th century long remained an important element of the Zulus' collective self-image.With:Saul DavidProfessor of War Studies at the University of BuckinghamSaul DubowProfessor of History at the University of SussexShula MarksEmeritus Professor of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonProducer: Phil Tinline.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, on the 22nd of January 1879, as the British tried to invade their kingdom, an army of African warriors,

armed mainly with iron spears, attacked an advance column of the Imperial Army. Despite facing an enemy equipped with modern rifles and artillery, the Zulu subjected the invaders to a famous humiliating defeat. Even as they moved to break the power of the Zulu, the British Empire remained haunted by the mythology of a terrifying martial race. The victor of the Zulu, beneath the mountain, is Andluana, was the last great triumph in almost a century of political dominance.

At the dawn of the 19th century, the Zulu were a small, undistinguished clan, living near the East Curs of Southern Africa. But in the 1820s they expanded their domain, breathtaking speed, conquering a swath of surrounding peoples and sending thousands more fleeing in their wake. The man often credited with pioneering the Zulu's astonishing rise was the great military strategist Shaka, but the history of the Zulu was also shaped by vast economic changes culminating with the discovery of diamonds.

With me, to discuss the rise and fall of the Zula Nation, are Saul Dubot, Professor of History at the University of Sussex, Schula Marx, Emeritus Professor of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London and Saul David, Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham. Saul David, can you give us a sense of what the Zulus, who the Zulus were before the rise of Shaka? Well, they were a relatively insignificant clan, the Nguni clan,

but part of the wider, of course, banned two people who'd migrated a century earlier from mid-Natal to their current homeland on the mid-Mfaloz river. and it was, to give you a sense of their size, we don't know the exact numbers, but possibly as few as 1,500 people and an area as small as 10 square miles.

And what did they do? How did they subsist? What was their economy? Well, they're pastoral people whose wealth is measured in terms of cattle, but their chief staple diet was sour milk known as a marsy and also maize,

so they wouldn't eat their cattle, of course, because their cattle was their wealth. And so we've got the numbers, we've got their place, Were they penned into these 10 square miles or were the nomadic? They effectively lived in that particular area. Their cattle would graze over that area. Of course, one of the great movements,

one of the great movements towards centralisation of the tribes of this area was competition for land as the populations expanded. But at this particular time, they were effectively penned in this relatively small area. Would they be fighting other neighbouring tribes to get a bit more land here and there? They would have been, there would have been almost ritual warfare going on at this time. There's very little in the way of actual destructive warfare. And this, of course, is what the Zulus were able to adapt and were able to use to their great advantage. What do you mean by ritual warfare?

Well, the warfare was effectively throwing spears. It was a show of force in which the defeated side would live to fight another day. So though you'd fight against your enemy, you'd rarely take over his territory. Now, we've told that Shaka changed all this. Can you tell us something about him? He's an extraordinary man, Chaka. He is born in 1787, the son of the chief of the Zulu, and it's, of course, an insignificant tribe even then. But although he was the eldest son, he wasn't the designated heir, and this wasn't unusual among the Zulus, because the air would tend to come from the great wife, and the great wife was often only taken by the chief late in life to prevent the danger of usurpation. So Shaka's born not as the design.

He was polygamous, the chief. Exactly. And Shaka, although he's the eldest, he's also born with a certain amount of stigma, hence his name, because Shaka is Zulu for intestinal beetle. And that was the excuse given for the inopportune pregnancy that led to Shaka's birth. He was actually born, or at least conceived out of wedlock. How did he get to be chief of the Zulus, then? Well, it's a long and rather torturous road, actually, because he leaves the Zulu tribe with his mother. When he's only seven, he's sent to the neighboring Ilang G. Gaini tribe, which is actually her tribe. And even there, he doesn't settle. And he moves from

the Elangani tribe to the Metaetwa. And the Metaetwa are important in this story, because they are effectively the paramount tribe of the area. But you don't think of them as any more than basically very loose overlords. They control very loosely a confederation of about 50 tribes, one of which was the Zulu. Now, it's during his time with the Metetwa, with a subclan of the Motewa, the Shaka really begins to develop his military prowess. And he calls, and he calls, quickly comes to the notice of the Paramount Chief, a man called Job, and his successor after Job's death in 1807, Dinger's Wyo. And it's during his time with Dingeswai's armies,

fighting for seven years from 1807 to 1816, from 9 years from 1807 to 1816, that Shaka begins to develop the political and military philosophy that he will use to bring his father's tribe to greatness. And at the time in that place, it was remarkable, wasn't it? It was remarkable, because, as I've already pointed out, Wars were rarely decisive. Battles were rarely decisive.

The way Shaka changed all this is by two things. He changed the philosophy of war so that they would actually become battles of destruction. And he also changed the weapons and tactics of war. He began to introduce something known as the short stabbing spear, the Iqloire. We don't think that he invented it, but he certainly made its use common, particularly among the regiment that he commanded of the Méttewa. And this meant, of course, that you had to close with your enemy, that it was close court of fighting.

He also used envelopment tactics that would use part of the regiment to fix the enemy and two wings to surround it so that there was no escape. And after the destruction of the enemy, the ultimate sort of end of his political philosophy was to absorb the beaten enemy into that particular tribe. Shula Marx, to what extent was the rise of the Zulu

under Shaka, a consequence of broader changes? I think that one needs to see the rise of several kingdoms in this period, in this period late 18th, early 19th century. Although we focus on the Zulu and Shaka, in a sense that's almost a product of the war which came against the British in 1879 and the accident that the first white observers in this area

came upon Shaka in his heyday. But what we're now beginning to understand from much more careful work on oral tradition, on archaeology, on the context in which Charcot rose, is that he was not quite as unique as we would like to make out. By the end of the 18th century, there's evidence from a number of places in South Africa, among the Sutukwana, for example, over on the west side of South Africa on the Heifeld, among the Cape Africans, and indeed among the Africans living in the era which we now call

Quasulu Natal, of consolidation of the creation of much larger chieftains, not simply clans, not simply even single ethnic chiefdoms, that multi-ethnic chiefdoms. And many of the innovations which conventionally have been associated

with Shaka were already being experimented with, if you like, by a number of these chiefdoms in northern Natal, Quasulu Natal. Part of the impetus for that seems to have come from the trading relationship with Delago Bay, present-day Lorenza Marx in Mozambique, present-day Maputo, in fact it used to be called Lorenza Marx in Maputu, where ships were calling through from the 16th century really.

How did that stimulate the economy? Well, because you began to get increasing numbers of ships crawling at the bay wanting ivory, which was a key export, wanting cattle food for the ships, which was not only a key export, but also very significant in the actual social structure of the... But how did it actually affect what was going on there? Well, because in order to trade ivory, you have to kill elephants, and in order to kill elephants, you need large numbers of people,

especially if you don't have firearms. But trade in southern Africa goes right back. I mean, as far back almost as we have archaeological evidence of the Iron Age. The context is well established. I really like to concentrate on the Zulus Vist. Yes, but you're asking me how we know that the trade affected it. Well, once you start trading cattle, people start competing over selling the cattle because they're getting commodities which they really value,

including beads, which form a kind of currency in much of southern areas. Africa before the 19th century and into the 19th century, going back to the 10th century from India. So these kingdoms begin to fight with one another, A, to control the trade to the north, and there may also have been a complicating factor that there's the beginning of a slave trade round to Delago as well. But there are also ecological changes in this period, and new crops come into the area. So you're getting a population increase by the late 18th century, a massive famine at the beginning of the 19th century, and in that context, chieftains start fighting with one another.

I mean, it is a period of enormous turbulence in a number of places across South Africa by the early 19th century. Can I talk about Shaka and what's called The Crushing? Could you tell listeners what's meant by that? Well, again... consequences of that? Again, the usual picture is that Chaka was the main cause of these upheavals, which I've been trying to sketch in in the early 19th century. He comes into a situation which is already extremely turbulent. In fact, one of the ways in which he attracted people to him was by promising those who joined him security against this turbulence.

But in the conventional story of this period, there's, is this great turmoil labeled the crushing Mifakane or Diffacane in Soutu where people scatter in a whole variety of directions. As I say, the conventional picture is that Chaka was solely responsible for that. We're now beginning to see that there were four or five which King was responsible for that. I completely understand, and I'm not brushing or anything,

but I just would like to localise it a little bit because that's what we're supposed to be talking about. And so what did Char could do, which was part of, I understand part of, I've got that, the crushing. What does the crushing mean? Well, the crushing means the conquest of neighbouring tribes and the fact that they scattered from this tiny corner of Southeast Africa right up to as far as Tanzania, present-day Tanzania, Zambia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and into the central part of South Africa, down into the Cape. And this was a consequence of a series of wars,

for which Shaka held only part of the responsibility. Soldu, Dubot, in geographical terms, we've heard from Shula about the reach of the Zulu kingdom and its zenith in the 1820s. Can you tell us a bit more about how Shaka achieved this breach, expanding the Zulu clan in such a huge work? Well, it depends when you say it's such a huge way. It is large in terms of the extent that Saul David started, you know, 1,500 people or so.

At its height in, say, the late 1820s, we're talking about a region which is probably about the size of Wales. I mean, South East Africa, you've got the Indian Ocean as one boundary, the Drakensburg as another boundary, the Pongola River up in the north towards Mozambique as another natural boundary, and towards the south, the Togela River, which becomes the standard demarcation with Natal. Now, that's the core of the Zulu Empire. We're probably talking about 250,000 people or so. Well, actually, you said it wasn't very big.

If he's gone from about 500 to 250,000 in 10 years, it's quite a jump. It is quite a jump. And so that's the size of it. And he achieved that through conquest. Well, the size is even bigger. And the conquest resulted in the crushing, which, as I understand, it was people rushed away,

evicted, emigration, evacuees, that sort of thing on a very big scale. Yes, the reach of the Zulu Empire, if one thinks about the ability of Shaka and Dingan and so forth to raid, in order to get ivory or to further conquest or to secure their position, is considerably larger than that. But we're talking about a core. We must remember we're not talking about a modern state system with a bureaucratic way of policing borders and so forth. We're talking about client-state relationships between people that you can, maintain control over. So there's a kind of core which we might say is about the size

of Wales. And there's a further area which is probably twice that size where Shaka and Dingan in a very fluid way have continuing reach and access and control. But the client status that's been empires made their way

in that way for centuries. Precisely. We were a client state of Rome. Exactly. In fact much of, a few weeks ago I was listening to your interesting program on Budica. And I was thinking that much of what we were talking about there, including the fact that we don't actually know a lot of basic information about Sharca would apply equally. Can you sketch in, Sol, the...

Sol Duval, I've got two souls here today, a very unusual occurrence. Can you sketching the two groups of people who'd have played a big part there, the Boers and the British? Where are they at this stage? Let's say in the 1820s. Shaka, and I know others as Shula has spelled out, are on the move in different ways. Let's stick with this. what part did they play in what's going to happen

what is happening to the Zulu Nation? Well let's start with the British. The British take over Cape Town, the Cape in 1806. By the 1820s they're firmly established in Cape Town. In the 1820s, about 500 miles to the northeast, after the Napoleonic Wars, a group of British settlers are placed in Grahamstown, which is a fort, to defend effectively the eastern frontier

against the Corsa, who really are much greater threat to the British at this time. There was 100 years of warfare with Corsa. The Boers, who were the traditional Dutch settlers in the Cape, also pastoralists, move out from the Cape in the mid-1830s, partly because of the abolition of slavery. They wanted to keep their slaves. They wanted to keep their slaves, and there was problems with land,

and they wanted to increase, they claimed that God had told them that this was their destiny to be, there's a lot of argument about that. But anyway, so they're moving through the interior of South Africa. And one party of them crosses the Jarkensburg, sees Natal, the sub-tropical region,

terribly fertile, and moves up and starts relationships of sometimes cooperation, trade, but warfare with the Zulu. The British as well, not even the British, but small, tiny parties of English speakers, settle themselves at Portn-Nor.

Natal, which is now Durban. So, and then there's all sorts of conflicts between the British and the Boers as well. So by the mid-1830s, you have the Nguni, Zulu-speaking people in that region. You have the Boers pressing on the Zulus, and you have the British as well who are concerned partly to restrain the Boers because they are very, very concerned about the consequences of the Boers establishing themselves. They didn't create, in fact, create. and a proto state called Natalia,

and they're wanting to control those Boers, particularly when the Boers start fighting with a Corsa, which is creating tensions, more reverberations on the Eastern K. So we're talking with a very, very fluid, very complex picture, no clear states, lots of different

influences. But different powers on the move and trying to be more powerful, but literally on the move. Zulu's expanding their empire, if you want to call it, lands, and the Boers are looking for Newlands and the British trying to consolidate around all over the other places. As you say,

a lot of fluidity, but a lot of power play as well. Saul David, Shaka was killed in assassinated, as far as we know, in 1828. What happened to the Zulu nation after that? Well, he's killed by his two half-brothers and

Fractricicide is a bit of a theme in Zulu power politics, Zulu-Courtley politics. Not a known in England. Not a known in Europe in politics either. And immediately, of course, the two half-brothers who killed him then have a power struggle among themselves, Dengan wins out, having murdered his brother. And he then takes control of this huge empire. But I think we have to see the Zulu empire really at his zenith at this point, because from this stage onwards, not least because of the points that Saul's just made,

the gradual encroachment on the power of the Zulus from the British and the Boers will ultimately lead, as we will come to, to its destruction. Can you tell us, Saul, back to Saul, Beau, what happened when Dhinga found himself faced by the fur-trekkers? That's about 10 years later. It leads to the Battle of Blood River. How is he managing? Is he a much lesser person than Sharkar?

Is that known around the place? Have things changed? Are they on the retreat? What's going on? I don't know that he's a much lesser person, but the situation has clearly become much more complicated. And, of course, we know a lot more about the situation precisely because the Boers and the British were there

and people are recording. But in 1838 it comes to something of a climax because the Boer leader Pretorius comes to a kind of agreement with Dingan, which effectively settles the frontier of Natalia and the Zulu at the Togela River. And the agreement is that if Dingan recognizes that boundary and if the Boers return cattle to Dingan, that this will be the basis of some kind of security in the situation. Dingaan then invites Peturus a few days later into his royal enclosure to celebrate, and as part of the protocol says that the boers, there are about 60 of them, should leave their muskets behind,

and then in amidst the dancing and so forth, or so the mythology tells us, the boers are killed, all of them are killed, and then the Zulu launch raids on some Boers, settlements in the region and probably about five or six hundred Fortrecker's men, women and children are killed. That's quite a high number dealing with small numbers of people. In December of 1838, the Boers, so they claim, make a vow, a covenant with God, that if God will allow them to defeat the Zulu, at least to eviscerate the Zulu, they will build a church in the honor of God. and at the Battle of Blood River

where the Furtrachers draw their wagons into a lager and heroically defeat the boot. There are only something like three Furtrackers are injured and up to 3,000 Zulus are killed. And the Furtrker's number about what's their number? Well, I think we're dealing with the low thousands

at this, probably a couple of thousand people. And this is very much part of an absolutely crucial part of Afrikaner nationalist mythology. This for the Afrikaners and for later Afrikaner nationalist history is the proof that God has recognised their position in Africa. Now, I'm giving you the sort of mythologised version of this because in fact there's very little evidence, for example, that the vow, the covenant, was actually recognised by the Boers for many years after this event. And yet one of you said earlier that we knew a lot more now because we were dealing with people who kept records. So where does that leave Ashura?

I think that we begin to get written records really from the advent of largely English traders who come to Zululand and settle at Portn-Natal with the agreement of the Zulu King of Shaka in the 1820s. The problem is that in a sense by shining a spotlight on Shaka, at least everything else in darkness and we're not always as aware as we should be of the limitations of the. those documents. But increasingly as missionaries join the traders, as the Boers come in and the British government begins to take

or the British authorities I should say at the Cape begin to take an interest in a towel, we have an increasing number of documents. This gives us an insight in a way into what the British traders, the British authorities,

the Boers were up to. It's less good until us what was happening within African society. For that we have to look to the oral sources which are collected rather later on. In fact, for much of the period, I think the settlers at Natal who follow in the wake of the British annexation of Natal, which only happened in the 1840s, British settlers really didn't know what was happening among the Zulu to the north of the Tugela. it might just be worth sketching at this point the relationship which emerged

after this terrific battle of Blood River Can I just go? Yeah, please go on it. Because I think in a way, from 1840 until the 1870s, the Zulu and the settlers in Portnettel reach a kind of uncomfortable modus for Vendi And this is partly because the king who succeeds Dingani,

because after the Battle of Blood River, Dengani's half-brother Mpande decides to make an alliance with the Boers and in fact defeats Dengani, who's forced to flee. Mpande is Dengani's half-brother. It is, as Saul David was saying, fratricide. is not uncommon in all of this.

It's a way to change. And Pundi becomes the king of the Zulu in 1840 and agrees that the Tugela River will be the boundary between the white settlers and his kingdom. When the British take over, they recognise that boundary so that we begin to get much more clearly formed states north of the Tugela Zululand, south of the Tugela, the colony of Nautau. And something like a settlement for about 30 years. Saul Davies, so the Boz had established a republican Natal.

And there was a sort of, as Shula said, an uneasy settlement, but we're talking about 30-odd years, which is quite a long, in terms of the turbulence that we've been talking about, you know, replacing a king by assassination and massacres like Blood River and so on. Why did the British decide to interfere there in annex Natal? Well, and we've already touched on some of the reasons. They were worried about Borr...

Boer influence, I suppose, on Zulu politics, they were worried about Boer influence on native tribes in what became Natal and, of course, was at that time, Natalia. And it's really a power struggle between the British and the Boers that had never really been relinquished from the time that the Boers had left the Cape Colony. So that by 1842, 1843, the British are pretty determined to bring the Boers in Natalia to heal. And they do this by military purposes. And after the defeat of the Boers in 1843 and the, a. absorption of Natal into the British Empire as a crown colony,

the Boers, of course, trek north over the Drakensburg and found the two republics that we still remember today, and of course a loom very large in this story, Orange Free State and the Transphal. So enter now Theophilus Shepstone, Saul Dubot. The most unlikely name, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, he became, son of a missionary, Zulu speaking, fluent administrator, very influential among the Zulus,

and one assumes among the Brueu-Ber. British. What role did he play and why is he important in this period? Well, he is, he comes to South Africa as part of the 1820 settles. His family settle in Grahamstown and in fact before he becomes fluent in Zulu, he becomes fluent in Cosa. And he works his way up. He pioneers a system of government, which I think is terribly important, not just for South Africa, but indeed for the whole of British Africa. And that is, he realizes that it is impossible to govern people directly, to have full direct control. So he pioneers a form of indirect government, which effectively means recognizing African customs to appoint, recognizing African laws, and ruling through intermediaries.

When he moves to Natal in, I think 1845, he then accumulates enormous power. He becomes the Secretary for Native Affairs. He uses his African name, Somtio. He becomes in what other people have called a kind of form of ornamentalism. He becomes the kind of greatest chief of the region. And he is very interestingly positioned because on the one hand, the white settlers in a total are crying out for labour and crying out for the destruction of the Zulu Empire. And he's saying, no, that's far too dangerous. They represent a great threat. Let me be the interstate. Let me be the intermediary. On the other hand, he forms an alliance with a liberal bishop, Bishop Colenzo, himself a figure of enormous interest, who sympathizes with what seems to be Shepston's

cultural pluralism, cultural relativism. This all comes, however, to a great crisis in 1873, when the defeat of the Shluby, this dispute about guns, means that Shepston decisively crosses the boundary and becomes an agent of British imperialism. And this creates a tremendous tension between him and Colenzo, Kalenza, liberal-minded bishop and so forth. And from that point on, Shepston really, instead of being able to pose as the defender of the Zulu and Zulu customs and so forth, becomes actively the agent of British imperialism.

And really one of the key people persuading the British of the necessity to destroy the Zulu King. them. And they turn their guns on that. But before then, Ashulamark's, and big factor is the discovery of diamonds and the need for labour, and labour, cheap labour, sort of slave labour, and that had been brought in from India a lot. And one of the things that, as Saul Dubot has mentioned, is that the Zulus kept where they were. They were regimented, literally regiment. Shaka had put them in different regiment, agent regiments, and they would not come out into the bigger labour market by and large. So this was a disturbing factor. Can you tell us how the

discovery of diamonds really began to disrupt what had been a sort of settled situation for quite a while? Diamonds were discovered in an area which became part of the Cape Colony in 1867, 1868, and very dramatically and very quickly transformed the social and economic situation in South Africa in general, not just in the area where diamonds were found. there was a diamond rush, large numbers of people came into South Africa hoping to make their fortune on the diamond fields. In fact, that's where Rhodes went on to make his fortune. And in their wake, economic changes took place. There was a new demand for food.

There was a demand for transport at almost every level in society. And it happened remarkably quickly. I mean, within about five years, the import duties on good. coming into South Africa, dramatically increased the treasuries of Natal and the Cape Colony, for example. And in order to build the roads and the railways and the harbors and to improve agriculture, there's a tremendous demand for African labour. So this is not new because there'd always been some demand for African labour, but it's intensified in the wake of the diamond fields discovery. At the same time, for many Africans, there was no reason to go and work

on the diamond fields because they had an adequate subsistence and were able, if they needed cash, to get it by selling their crops on the market or selling cattle by this time. They were doing that in some parts of South Africa. So that all over South Africa, Africans have to be persuaded to come onto the labour market. And one of the ways they were persuaded was by the sale of guns at Kimberley. So at the very time that there's increasing pressure on African lands, and African labour.

They're given the wherewithal with which they might be able to defend themselves. So once again we have a period of great turbulence in the 1870s. So David, who is Cetweo and how did he figure? And can we just take the Zulu nation

through that next stage and hurdle towards the sort of fall of it, 1877 when Henry Bartle-Frier comes in? Can you take us up to that point? There's almost a transition point. We've got the diamonds, we've got the way that Shepson has played, one game as so on it tells us and then another game. Can you just bridge that gap before we come to the British? Well, Ketchweo is, of course, the chief player in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

He's born in 1833. He's the eldest son of Mapande, but like his uncle Shaka before him, he's not expected to become the next chief. There's a favoured son who's younger than him, one of his half-brothers, called, Mbayazi who through the 1850s he really has to compete with for primacy, this role of air designate. And he does this in a very similar way to Shaka actually, in the sense that he uses his military prowess, his early years in a regiment of Mpande's army, to build up his support, both among the regiments, but also among the princes and the great chiefs of the kingdom. until 1857 he feels strong enough to take on in battle his brother and defeats him in 1857.

Now, the result of this battle is not to put him, of course, as king because his father is still alive, but effectively it confirms him as the heir. And in the period between 1857 and the death of Mapandi in 1872, there is in effect a dual monarchy at which Chichwayo performs sort of equal power. Saul Dubot, in 87, Henry Bartle Freer became Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa, for South Africa. He became a key player. Can you tell us what he did?

Well, Bartle Freya comes from India. He has a glittering career. He particularly distinguished himself during the Indian Mutiny as one of the few people who did on the British side. He's a man of great cultivation. He's president of the Royal Asia Arctic Society Royal Geographical Society and so forth. And he's brought in because the then colonial secretary of Carnarvan,

Twitters as he was called, decides that the whole region of South Africa, and we don't yet have a unitary state. He wants to federate the whole of the Union of South Africa, or federate South Africa. So he persuades a frere, much against Freire's instincts, to come to South Africa, gives them a great deal of money, possibly a peerage. And he says to Frere,

if you can bring this Confederation about, and this will be the great prize, and they locate the Zulu, the destruction of the Zulu, as being one of the absolutely key points, if you can defeat the Zulu, but also the Clause and the Pedi and others. If you can do this,

this will break African societies, create a ready source of labour, and be able to move to really, pacify the whole region of South Africa and bring it under effective British rule. So that's very clear. You're saying effectively, break the Zulus and you'll get the Confederations. Now, Freer himself

actually is a particularly interesting character because it comes to Cape Town. And there is now a campaign that is going on from Zululand. Shepston is feeding Carnar and Freer with rumors that Ketchwai wants to take over the whole of South Africa The New Zulu Chief, which has no basis at all.

And Freya is another one of these people who represents something of the dual side of liberalism that one can see in so many people at this time. On the one hand, he has a view which is progressive, which wants to bring African people the benefits of civilization and progress. But on the other hand, there's a hard-edged utilitarian view that he has to crush people, bring them into life. labour service and that he knows best. And he holds a gun to their head, doesn't he?

He holds a gun to their head. He gives them a month to sort of change their ways utterly or be invaded. That's right. I mean, there's no deal. And so this leads to the Zulu war, an extraordinary event, Saul, David, in the sense that on the 22nd of January 1879, there were

two battles. Can you briefly tell us about both of them on the same day? And one was a glorious, majestic, amazing victory for Zulu, and the other was a glorious, majestic, amazing defence for the British. Yes, extraordinary events. It begins on the 11th of January 1879 with the invasion.

And the invasion plan is to send in three columns, one in the north, one in the centre one. The invasion plan of the British. And the central column is commanded by the commander-in-chief Lord Chelmsford. And he takes roughly 5,000 men, and he marches over the course of 10 or 11 days to as far as the mountain, the craggy mountain of Islam 1. and when he reaches that mountain, he then divides his force again, not once but twice,

so that by the morning of the 22nd of January, only 1,700 men are left in the camp, and he's taken the remainder out on effectively a bit of a wild goose chase where he thinks the Zulus are, where the Zulus actually are is advancing on the camp. And on the morning of the 22nd of January, they attack the camp with 15,000 to 20,000 warriors. And after a hard fight, during part of which, Charleswood actually receives word that the attacks going on and will he come back and reinforce the camp and he ignores those orders thinking it's just alarmism. The camp is completely destroyed and only a matter of a couple of hundred people actually escape. Now some of them escape to

Rourke's drift, which is on the river. It's the drift over which the central column has advanced in the first place. It's effectively a supply camp. It's peopleed by about a hundred fit soldiers and 39 ill soldiers who are in a hospital there. And when they receive work, word from some of the survivors at Isamwana, that the Zulus are likely to be advancing on them. Their first instinct is to flee. But one of the heroes of the day, a man called Dalton suggests that actually

fleeing is not a good idea because the Zulus will be able to move faster than they can in their wagons. So why don't they just lager up and try and turn the post into a fortification, which is what they do? And for the course of the next roughly 12 hours, a battle rages in which 3 to 4,000 Zulu warriors, the reserve, which wasn't in action, at Islamwana attacks this fortified post and ultimately is beaten off and only 17 European

lives are lost and we don't know exactly but up to a thousand Zulus and what's most scandalous about the Battle of Rourke's drift is that at least 500 wounded Zulu prisoners of war were butchered after the battle itself and Michael Kane rules Christmas for evermore but just just one second before we move on from that islandwana this was a an army with spears taking on what was then called the thought of as the great modern world army with artillery and musk and so on even and defeating them and this was a great thing this was their great battle and still is in the memory of it was a great victory and it came about because of overconfidence on the on the part of the british commander lord charleswood he felt that with breach load modern breach loading weapons

he could take on any amount of zulus with even a force as small as he left at islam one now you could argue that if the commander of Islamana had lagered and fought behind defences, he may well have defended the camp, but those were not the orders that were left to him. Can you take us from those two battles to the end of the Zulu nation, as we've been talking about it now? To the end of the Zulu nation, not the end of the Zulu War. No, no. Right. Well, the war, of course, doesn't end at Izantuanah.

The final battle of the war was Chelmsford's alleged great victory. over the Zulu at Uluundi six months later. But the end of the battle wasn't the end of the Zulu. What happened as a settlement after the war was that Saganut-Wulzi, who had been sent out to South Africa, really because of the British disillusion with the way Chelmsford had run the war, to sort things out. Saganut Wulsey devises a settlement for Zulu,

which involves dividing the kingdom, into 13 different chiefdoms and appointing chiefs who were hostile to the Zulu King. The Zulu King himself was captured the end of the war and was exiled to the Cape. The result of that settlement, which some referred to as the Kilkenny Cat settlement, was the eruption of civil war in Zululand as royal family members were put under chiefs who opposed Kichwai. And the kingdom fell apart. Keshwai returns briefly. That's a disaster.

And in some, there's a second battle of Ulundi, which kills off essentially the political hierarchy. The elders, though. The elders. And then that, in a sense, is the, if you want a moment, for the end of the Zulu kingdom, that is the end of the Zulu kingdom. Kachwayo dies in a...

1984 and leaves a young son as the heir. Finally, and we get to him to Mawad Jens, I sold you, but why would, how come the Zulus became so mythologised in English letters and folklore almost? Well, at the end of the Zulu War, Disraeli remarks very droly a remarkable people, the Zulu, they convert our bishops, defeat our generals and put an end to a great European dynasty. What he meant by converting our bishop,

of course was a reference to Colenzo, who becomes the great ally of the Zulu and actually learns from the Zulu and feeds into his great book on the Pentateuch, where he challenges the literal interpretation of the Bible. And the reference to the great European dynasty is the crown prince, Napoleon, who is killed in battle during the Zulu war. But I think the real thing about the Zulu is that Rida Haggard actually, who plays a great role in this, is the two kind of complementary stereotypes. stereotypes the Zulu are built up. On the one hand, they're a martial race, they racially powerful, they're eugenically fit, they're not degenerate. On the other hand, they might make great houseboys muscular, wearing white linen and recognizing authority and so forth. So the Zulu perform that kind of function in late 19th century British visions of empire, which condenses all sorts of stereotypes into one. Would you agree with that finally and briefly, Saul David? Yes, because the British were great co-optors of so-called former martial races into their armed forces. And actually one of the great surprises about the Zulus is that they never were taken into. Although there were discussions, they were never actually taken into the British army.

But there was and still is an admiration for the fighting qualities of the Zulus. Well, thank you very much. Saul David, Solio Bo, Shula Marx. Next week, Satai. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research. To find out more, visit BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four.