#isandlwana

[beardedmrbean]

[redarmyscreaming]

January 22, 1879, a Zulu impi of approximately 20,000–24,000 warriors, under leadership including Ntshingwayo Khoza, decisively defeated a British force of about 1,800–2,000 men at Isandlwana, South Africa.

[toomanyjulies]

#throwbackthursday to November 2017, that time we drove to #isandlwana #zululand #southafrica (at Isandlwana) https://www.instagram.com/p/CodPimdSJVj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bantarleton]

The Last of the 24th by Richard Thomas Moynan. The painting is based on an account of the last survivor of the battle if Isandlwana fighting from a small cave in the hill’s crag before finally being overwhelmed. 

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Anglo-Zulu War of 1879: British imperialism in South Africa and Zulu resistance.

In the midst of the Victorian Era in January 1879, British imperialism was literally on the march in South Africa, its goal to conquer the native African Zulu Kingdom and continue fitting together the many jigsaw pieces of the continent of Africa into yet another of Britain’s domains.  What followed in January 1879 was anticipated to be a relatively easy conquest for the British, what followed in the opening engagements of the war was a surprise defeat that would be the worst the British Empire would face at the hands of a native force and within 24 hours of that defeat, a harrowing tale of survival and victory against great odds, enough to both stir the British public and the world at large.

British interest in the Southern tip of Africa stemmed out of its rivalry with France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  Since the mid 1600′s the Dutch East India Company had made the South African coast a colony of its own, initially as a way station to its more lucrative colonial markets in India and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).  During the ensuring 150 years, a number of Dutch, German, Scandinavian and French Huguenot settlers migrated here, working for the colony, farming, importing slaves from Indonesia and interacting with the native San and Khoikhoi peoples, interactions ranged from violent wars, employment and intermarriage.  Out of this community developed the daughter language of the Dutch authorities, known today as Afrikaans and still spoken among the Dutch descended community of South African Europeans, known as Afrikaners. 

In 1795, amidst the French Revolutionary Wars, the Dutch Republic, ally of France was subject to British attacks.  The Dutch Cape Colony, built at the Cape of Good Hope was attacked in 1795 and taken over by the British and occupied until 1803 as part of the Treaty of Amiens which made peace with Napoleonic France.  However, war struck again by 1806 and the British won the Battle of Blaauwberg near Cape Town.  Thereafter the British established Cape Colony and ruled this corner of South Africa.  The Dutch settlers came to resent British rule and rules.  In the early 19th century many ventured out into the wilds of the South African interior, on the so called Great Trek.  The community that undertook this pioneer movement were known as the Trekboer or Boer for short, meaning “farmer” in Dutch which was their primary occupation.  Their goal was to establish communities for themselves where they could farm under their own laws, practice their strict Dutch Reformed brand of Calvinism and engage in slavery as they had under Dutch colonial rule and practice their brand of rugged individualism.  The Boer came into contact and eventual conflict with many native African peoples in the interior they had not previously encountered.  Namely, the Bantu speaking peoples, one tribe of which had coalesced into the Zulus.

The Bantu speaking peoples has migrated western and central Africa to South Africa and displaced or assimilated many of the original native Khoisan natives that had inhabited all of South Africa previously.  Out of these displacements the Bantu speaking peoples became the predominant native tribes, which formed into distinct kingdoms, one of which was the Zulu Kingdom with origins in the 18th century that completely forged into a unified kingdom in around 1818 under Shaka.  Under his rule the Zulu expanded their power and territory through a series of military reforms and war pushing some tribes further east into contact with the fellow Bantus, the Xhosa and the Europeans pushing west.

The Boers encountered the Zulus by the late 1830′s having crossed the Orange river.  A massacre of Boer pioneers  and their Khoikhoi servants by the Zulu which killed roughly Boer 250 men, women and children and 250 of their servants and known as the Weenen Massacre, solidified the tensions between the Boers and the Zulu.  The Boers thought God had entitled them to their own land and the Zulu saw themselves as defending against potential encroachment.  This was followed up with the Battle of Blood River in December 1838 in which the Boers numbering 464 plus a couple hundred servants were attacked by 10,000-15,000 Zulu warriors.  What followed was a very one sided victory for the Boers, they found an effective way to defend themselves against the Zulu charge armed mostly with spears, form their pioneer wagon trains into a protective interlocked circle called a laager.  The Boers were expert shots with rifles and muskets, spending their whole life hunting for food in the South African veldt or prairie, they developed a deep gun culture of necessity and made every shot count.  As the Zulus rushed in armed with their short stabbing spears they were gunned down by the Boer’s muskets and improvised cannons.  3,000 Zulu were dead and only 3 Boers wounded.  The lopsided victory was hailed as a miracle by the religious Boers and in time their developed their own republics known as the Boer Republics of Natalia, Orange Free State and the Transvaal (South African Republic).  These lands were developed in part on lands that removed the Zulu threat for now, though tensions persisted off and on for decades.

Meanwhile, the British were not content to stay on the coast and also saw the establishment of the Boer Republics as geopolitical obstacles to the overall European colonization of the African continent, of which Britain sought to be the leader.  So by the mid 19th century, modern South Africa was a hodgepodge of European colonies officially under British rule and the semi-independent Boer Republics as well as African kingdoms such as the Zulu.  The British claimed leadership over the Boer Republics even though they were beyond official British territory, their justification was that Boers originated in the British Cape Colony and were therefore still British nationals despite their Dutch origins, distinct culture language and religion.  Natalia was officially annexed in 1843 and the Boers pushed even further west giving rise to the still nominally British but more or less independent Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics.  Furthermore, the British made treaties with a number of African tribes on land the Boers settled which recognized tribal sovereignty, the Boers resented this as they sought either independence or at the very least more sovereignty than the African natives whom they regarded as inferior in terms of racial views prevalent at the time.

In 1854, the British government recognized the sovereignty of the Orange Free State though not the Transvaal and these tensions along with discoveries of gold and diamonds and the establishment of mines making the Boers rich would lead to increasing tensions between the British and the Boer Republics.  However, the British post 1867 sought to confederate South Africa into a unified set of colonies under British dominion as they had in Canada.  Sir Bartle Frere was named High Commissioner of South Africa for Britain and he was to oversee the confederation, one obstacle to this was the Zulu Kingdom.  The British saw the Zulu as a potentially dangerous threat that would resist confederation and their goal, at least Frere’s was to initiate a war that would justify its conquest and pacification.

1877 saw the British annex the Boer Republic of Transvaal which the Boers objected to but lingering tension with the Zulus was seen as the more immediate threat and for the time being tolerated the British annexation.  The British justification was in part to oversee the decrease of tensions between the Boers and Zulu and they felt they were empowered to do so.  The Zulu King at this time was named Cetshwayo.  He upheld the traditions of military doctrine established under Shaka, including the use of the short stabbing spear known as the assegai.  Zulu warriors also used cowhide shields and had a few old muskets but their marksmanship was considered overall quite poor.  Their regiments were known as impi.  Their preferred tactic was the “buffalo horn” tactic, a variation of a pincer movement.  The idea was to overwhelm the enemy with massive numbers and charge them from two sides, the “horns” which pinned the enemy while the center or “chest” of the buffalo finished the enemy off supported by reserve or “loins” of the buffalo.

Frere gave an ultimatum in late 1878 to the Zulu Kingdom following incidents on the border between the Natal Colony and Zululand.  Effectively Cetshwayo was ordered to make certain payments to the British, disband the Zulu military system and most importantly allow a British agent or “resident” serve as de facto governor approving all decisions of Cetshwayo’s and ensuring compliance with terms of the treating.  Cetshwayo would essentially be giving up his right to rule in all but name, some terms he could agree to but giving up Zulu independence was not one, he did not reply in time as Frere had expected.  This gave him the opportunity to launch an invasion of Zululand, without actual authorization from London which had other international commitments namely in India and in Europe’s Balkans which distracted it’s attention away from South Africa.  Nevertheless, January 1879 saw the start of the Anglo-Zulu War.

The war commenced on January 11th with three British columns attacking Zululand at once.  The goal was to meet the Zulu, defeat them and take their capital, Ulundi.  Command was given to Lord Chelmsford who marched his troops past the Buffalo River at an old trading station called Rorke’ Drift.  The British would leave some troops here to control as a supply depot and hospital.  While the rest of the columns (Numbers 2 and.3 Column) marched into the open veldt country of Zululand, a mix of European troops and native African auxiliaries.  The British regulars still wore their signature red wool coats which stood out against the yellow and khaki countryside of the open grasslands of South Africa.  The British used modern Matini-Henry rifles, some field gun cannons and a rocket brigade for support along with wagon trains for supplies.  On January 20th, the British pitched camp at Isandlwana, a rocky formation that rose out of the otherwise grassy veldt.  On the 21st and 22nd Chelmsford got reports of Zulu in the area and went off to pursue, thinking the main body of the Zulu army was nearby.  Chelmsford was lead on a wild goose chase.  The British had vastly underestimated the Zulu’s strategy, divide the British, isolate and attack them out in the open.  Despite, Boer warnings not to underestimate the Zulu for their tactics the British were far too convinced victory was a given after demonstration of modern firepower.  On the 22nd as Chelmsfords’s main force was a away roughly 1,800 British and native allied troops were still encamped at Isandlwana, a few scouts ventured to nearby hills only to see 20,000 Zulu on the opposite side lying in silent wait.  The scouts retreated but it was too late.  The British hadn’t circled their wagons in a laager formation as the Boers had suggested, leaving them open and exposed and scattered.  The Zulu began forming the horns of their pincer movement on the crest of hills nearby.  The British tried to form up lines and fire on the advancing Zulu, indeed they inflicted many casualties but the Zulu were far too numerous and a sort of fighting retreat ensued by the British trying to rally north and west back to Rorke’s Drift and anywhere else.  The British were simply overwhelmed and killed in grouped or individual last stands.  The Zulu’s assegai had an advantage up close they disemboweled the British regulars with their spears, according to ritual this was to release the spirit of their enemy.  The British were defeated at Isandlwana with  1,300 dead.  The Zulu lost roughly 2,000 of their own. Chelmsford would arrive to a horrid disaster of great shock.

Meanwhile, at nearby Rorke’s Drift on the 22nd and into the 23rd 140 British troops were surrounded by 3,000-4,000 Zulu who marched from their earlier victory at Isandlwana in pursuit of British stragglers.  What ensued was effectively a siege to overrun the hospital and supply depot.  However, despite repeated Zulu attempts to overwhelm the British, the massed volleys of rifle fire and improvised defenses of corn bags stacked up along with a stone wall at the premises gave the British some measure of defense they lacked at Isandlwana.  The British would survive and emerge victorious at Rorke’s Drift.  The British would suffer 17 killed and roughly equal numbers wounded while the Zulu’s suffered around 350 killed and 500 wounded.  The British were low on ammo and could have been overwhelmed had the casualties for the Zulu not been high and their exhaustion due to fighting all day at Isandlwana and then marching further without rest and no food only to fight further sap them of their strength.  The Zulu retreated and the British angry over the attack and news from Isandlwana’s earlier disaster lead to patrols to march out among the wounded Zulu and kill them without mercy shooting, bayoneting and beating the wounded to death.

In 24 hours disaster had shocked the British with news of the defeat and scale of the massacre at Isandlwana, meanwhile the propaganda machine also played up the heroic defense of Rorke’s Drift from which some survivors were awarded the Victoria’s Cross, Britain highest military decoration.  Chelmsford would return home somewhat in disgrace.

Isandlwana and the reaction to it was somewhat akin to American defeat in June,1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn, where a smaller force armed with modern weapons underestimated their native enemy which outnumbered them and overwhelmed them.  Though in both cases the initial defeat only prompted public outcry for revenge and jingoistic war fever increased.  The Americans would come to defeat the Sioux in the Great Sioux War of 1876 and likewise in six months time the British re-invaded Zululand and despite a spirited resistance, a change in tactics along with overwhelming force and the destruction of their capital Ulundi by July 1879, victory was achieved and the Zulu were conquered.  Cetshwayo was imprisoned for sometime, became a celebrity and eventually died once returned to the Zulu.  The Zulu threat was no more, though Isandlwana resonates among their descendants as a great victory.  While for the British it was a cautionary tale of not underestimating your enemy, no matter the superiority of your technology. 

By 1880-1881 however, a renewed tension with the Boers was the pressing issue in South Africa.  With the Zulu threat neutralized, the Boers of the Transvaal planned to assert their independence.  Again the British underestimated their opponent, seeing the Boer as backwards Dutch speaking farmers, only forgetting these farmers like the Zulu knew the land they grew up in and unlike the Zulu were armed with the same modern guns the British were and were in many cases better individual shots than the British.  A brief war (First Boer War 1880-1881) would see the Transvaal gain its independence giving the British their first unfavorable treaty since the American Revolution a century before.  Boer independence would last a further two decades where an economic boom of gold and diamond mines on their territory would lead to further tensions and the bigger scale Second Boer War (1899-1902) which saw early heavy British defeats until a policy of scorched earth tactics and concentration camps against the Boer populace would lead to final British victory though at great economic and material cost.  This would eventually unite all of South Africa into the South African Union, completing Frere’s long sought after project of British confederation in the South of Africa.

[oupacademic]

The Anglo-Zulu War was one of the shortest British Victorian colonial campaigns, yet it has become the best known, thanks to the success of the 1964 film Zulu. The film, depicting the defence of Rorke’s Drift on 22-3 January 1879, unleashed an extraordinary interest in a war largely forgotten for over eighty years. It also created or revived many myths. The juxtaposition of the disastrous defeat at Isandlwana on 22 January 1879 with the successful defence of Rorke’s Drift on 22-3 January provided instant redress for a British public and press used to easy victories over indigenous foes in an expanding empire. The cultural legacy of the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift was of even longer duration.

“The Zulu writer and lyricist Mbongeni Ngema, best known for his work on Sarafina! and Woza Albert!, produced a storytelling narrative (with music), The Zulu, in 2013, based on stories by his great-grandmother, whose husband fought with the iNgobamakhosi. Commenting on the play’s production for the Edinburgh Festival in 2014, Ngema said he wanted to tell the story in the UK as well as South Africa because ‘it’s both our histories: it’s the history of South Africa, yet the battle of Isandlwana, in particular, is also the history of the Scottish [sic] people. It will be interesting for me to see how they respond to their own history. Our histories are intertwined by this story.’” -- Ian F. W. Beckett, Rorke’s Drift and Isandlawand: Great Battles, 2019

Image provided by Wikimedia Commons

[diorama-day]

[racingtoaredlight]

On This Day...

On this day in 1879, a small British Army garrison successfully defended a fortified mission station and hospital at a location called Rorke’s Drift against a much larger Zulu force. For their part in the defense of the mission station, eleven British soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valor in the British military and still the most VC’s awarded for a single action. This action formed the basis for the 1964 movie Zulu, which launched the career of actor Michael Caine.

The Battle of Rorke’s Drift occurred in the early stages of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Following their capture of the Dutch colony of Capetown during the Napoleonic Wars earlier in the nineteenth century, Britain gradually expanded into adjacent regions, forcing the migration of the Dutch Boers further north--which itself would lead to later conflict with Britain, which I’ve written about here before--and absorbed native kingdoms and principalities. In order to ensure social and political control over these newly conquered territories, and to add their influence into nearby lands still not captured, such as Zululand, a system of federation of these territories was suggested. Such a pattern of political organization had been successfully implemented by British officials and Canada and so the pattern was more or less repeated in south Africa.

In 1878, the British High Commissioner in South Africa, Sir Henry Frere, London’s representative in the region, undertook on his own initiative to impose a confederation in the region by force. In December, he presented an ultimatum to the Zulu king Cetshwayo which essentially ordered the Zulu to comply with Frere’s plans. The Zulu refused and Frere, without seeking authorization from London, dispatched a British Army column January 11, 1879, into Zulu lands to subjugate the Zulu.

The British force was armed with state of the art rifles and artillery, but was small. This problem was compounded when it was further divided into three columns in order to cover more territory. The main column, commanded by Lord Chelmsford, occupied the area around the mission station at Rorke’s Drift within days of crossing the frontier. Leaving a small force behind, he pushed further inland. On January 22, Chelmsford set up a camp several miles away from Rorke’s Drift, left behind a small force of 1,800 soldiers to defend it, and pushed further into Zulu territory in order to force battle upon their main army. The Zulu, however, evaded Chelmsford and fell upon the British camp at Isandlwana. In the subsequent battle, which allegedly took place under a partial solar eclipse, virtually the entire British force was killed and the camp plundered of supplies by the Zulu. Less than 300 British and native soldiers (members of the Natal Native Contingent) escaped the massacre.

The few survivors fled back towards Rorke’s Drift. Meanwhile, a party of Royal Engineers had arrived at the mission station in order to repair the pontoon bridge that crossed the river that ran adjacent to the mission station. This force, commanded by Lt. John Chard, joined the British and native garrison at Rorke’s Drift under Lt. Gonville Bromhead, together numbered approximately 400 men. There was also a handful of civilians, mostly workers in the hospital on the mission station’s grounds. A large number of the British soldiers at the station were recuperating from wounds in the hospital, but were counted among the garrison’s effectives because their injuries did not prevent them from standing in the firing line, if needed; they were “walking wounded.”

As Chard and his engineers prepared to repair the bridge, the survivors of Isandlwana appeared over the horizon, including a troop of Natal Native Cavalry, and warned that a large Zulu force was headed in their direction. Chard and Bromhead were the same rank, but as he had a few months of seniority on Bromhead, Chard assumed overall command. He immediately abandoned the bridge project and set the garrison to fortifying the mission station. Doors were barred with furniture, boxes and crates used to create walls with firing steps, other enclosures were linked together to form one cohesive wall. In some buildings, holes were cut through the walls in order allow soldiers to fire outside from inside the relative safety of the structure.

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As afternoon turned into evening, the Zulu appeared. Numbering almost 4,000 strong, they outnumbered the garrison 10-1. The Natal Cavalry of 100 troopers briefly skirmished with the Zulu before they retreated in order to avoid being overwhelmed. At this moment, approximately 250 members of the Natal Native Contingent in Rorke’s Drift fled from their posts and followed the cavalry. Some British soldiers, furious at being abandoned in the face of the enemy, fired at the NNC soldiers as they fled. The garrison had suddenly been reduced to approximately 140 men.

The Zulu attacked in waves. Armed mostly with large cowhide shields and short spears, they did not have the firepower of the British, but they used their numbers to their advantage. While unable to reach over the wall the British had hastily constructed, they climbed on top of each other at the base of the wall to reach the top. Fighting was fierce and often became hand to hand as the Zulu would push over into a section of the mission only to be forced back by British reinforcements from another part of the wall. Both Chard and Bromhead were in the thick of the fighting along with their men. The Zulu used sophisticated tactics in which an attack upon one section of the wall would force the British to shift men away from another part of the mission only then for another Zulu column to attack the now weakened section of the wall. Throughout the night Chard to had constantly move his exhausted men back and forth across the compound.

The fighting lasted approximately ten hours until after 4am, when the Zulu, having suffered heavy losses, fell back and resorted to using their few rifles and musket to shoot harassing fire into the garrison. Eventually they withdrew, worried about the approach of Chelmsford’s column, leaving behind 350 dead and 500 wounded. British losses included 17 dead and 15 severely wounded, though virtually every member of the garrison suffered at least some sort of wound due to the intense hand-to-hand fighting.

Despite lackluster leadership at times, the British ultimately prevailed over the Zulu five months later. Zulu lands became a part of British territory in South Africa. Frere, who instigated the entire war, was recalled to London and convicted of exceeding his authority, completely ending his diplomatic career. Bromhead and Chard both received the Victoria Cross and continued on in their military careers. They died just a few years apart two decades later; Chard of cancer and Bromhead of typhus while stationed in India. Their defense of Rorke’s Drift has become an iconic part of British colonial history in Africa among both viewers in the West and in African cultural traditions. Though they were defeated at Rorke’s Drift, the Zulu demonstrated a military prowess which has only recently come to be appreciated again.

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