MC_A Concise History of Africa

A Concise History of Africa

The Zulus In 1818–28, the warrior leader, Shaka Zulu, unified his people and turned them into a powerful fighting force, moving against other Africans and Europeans in South Africa. Shaka’s organization was something previously unknown in Africa, being a powerful, centralized militaristic kingdom. The army had around 40,000 men, organized by age and segregated from society, with women and old men doing the work of the villages. Shaka’s army was successful because it trained hard and was disciplined in the use of short, stabbing spears as well as long assegais. After his mother’s death in 1827, Shaka’s behavior grew more erratic, his cruelty extending even to his own people. During this mourning period for his mother, Shaka ordered that no crops be planted during the following year, no milk (the basis of the Zulu diet at the time) was to be drunk, and that any woman falling pregnant would be killed along with her husband. Despite the death of Shaka in 1828, assassinated by two of his half- brothers, Zulu power continued to expand. The Anglo-Zulu War was hard-fought on January 22, 1879, and the Zulus actually defeated the British at Isandhlwana; the British, however, triumphed at Rorke’s Drift later on the same day.

Text-Dependent Questions 1. Who where the Boers and what country did they originally come from?

2. Who established the Orange Free State?

economic and political order was unable to cope with the new challenges. The Mfecane, meaning “the crushing” or “scattering,” describes a period of widespread chaos and disturbance in southern Africa which, in around 1815–40, saw political changes, migrations, and wars that led not only to the emergence of the Swazi and Zulu nations, but eventually also to the founding of present-day Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Transvaal, and Tanzania.

of the ferocious young Zulu nation. The years 1830–34 saw the Great Trek North by the Dutch Boers in search of land to escape from British rule, the Orange Free State being established in the 1850s. Competition for land made it difficult for Africans to move around and practice their traditional way of life, and required excess population to split off, find unclaimed land, and settle and start anew. Overstocking, excessive cropping, and drought made life impossible, and the social,

The Zulu The Zulu is a Bantu ethnic group of southern Africa.

Its language is Zulu.

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