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The Impact of Early New England Missionaries on Women's Roles in Zulu Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Amanda Porterfield
Amanda Porterfield
Affiliation:
professor of religious studies and director of women's studies at Indiana University—Purdue University ar Indianapolis, Indiana.
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Extract

As missionaries from New England made initial forays into Zululand and Natal in the 1830s, the Zulu people were in a state of considerable stress. Dingan had come to power in 1828 after participating in the assassination of his brother Shaka, the notorious warrior king whose conquests after 1816 brought people from dozens of clans and chieftanships into a Zulu state. Ecological crises caused by drought and competition for scarce resources contributed to Shaka's ability to exert unprecedented authority, as did the predatory incursions of European traders seeking ivory, skins, and slaves in various parts of southeast Africa. Expanding on a tradition of religious initiation and military ranking known as ambutho, Shaka crated a system of loyalty to the state that built on but also compromised the loyalties to particular clans commanded by lesser chiefs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 67 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1997

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References

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11. Ibid.

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26. Quoted in Gaitskell, Deborah, “‘Wailing for Purity’: Prayer Unions, African Mothers and Adolescent Daughters 1912–1940,” in Industrialization and Social Change in South Africa: Africa Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness 1879–1930, ed. Shula, Marks and Richard, Rathbone (London, 1982), p. 339.Google Scholar

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