¹ One of 357,000 results for Zulu using the Google search engine. Parents wanting Zulu names for their babies can find a comprehensive list at www.kabalarians.com/male/zulu-m.htm.

² See www.heiszwolf.com/subs/foxtrot/Zulu.html and www.warship.simplenet.com/Tribal.htm.

³ http://www.heia-safari.co.za/html/hzk.html.

⁴ Hamilton, Carolyn, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 187–205Google Scholar.

⁵ The Sunday Times (South Africa), 8 November 1998, 19 November 2000Google Scholar.

⁶ Dominy, Graham, The Debate on Zulu Origins (Pietermaritzburg, 1992)Google Scholar

⁷ Weir, Jenny, “Ideology and Religion: the Missing Link in Explanations for the Rise and Persistence of the Zulu State” (Ph. D., University of Western Australia, 2001)Google Scholar.

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⁹ Chase, John Centilvres, ed. The Natal Papers: A Reprint of all Notices and and Public Documents Connected with that Territory (2 vols.: Grahamstown, 1843 [Cape Town, 1968]), 1:20Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London, 1973), 192Google Scholar. The citation has not changed through many editions since first publication in 1951.

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¹² For the use of colored maps to show ancient migrations and invasions in Europe see Black, Jeremy, Maps and History (New Haven, 1997), 79–81Google Scholar.

¹³ On Theal's work as an historian see Saunders, Christopher, The Making of the South African Past (Cape Town, 1988), 9–29Google Scholar, and Schreuder, D. M., “The Imperial Historian as ‘Colonial Nationalist:’ George McCall Theal and the Making of South African History” in Martel, G., ed., Studies in British Imperial History: Essays in Honour of A. P. Thornton (London, 1986). 95–158CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁵ Theal, G. M., History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi from the settlement of the Portuguese at Sofala in September 1505 to the Conquest of the Cape Colony by the British in September 1795. Vol I. The Portuguese in South Africa from 1505 to 1700 (London, 1910), 55Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Theal, , The Beginning of South African History (London, 1902), 29Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Marks, Shula, “South Africa: ‘The Myth of the Empty Land’,” History Today 30/1 (January 1980), 7–12Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Theal, , History of South Africa, 1795-1834 (London, 1891), opp. 328Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Walker, Eric, A History of Southern Africa (3d ed.: London, 1962), 20, 110Google Scholar.

²⁰ Schpera, Isaac, “The Native Inhabitants” in Cambridge History of the British Empire, VIII, South Africa (2d ed., Cambridge, 1963), 36–37Google Scholar.

²¹ Cole, Monica, South Africa (2d ed., London, 1966), 97Google Scholar.

²² Ibid.

²³ Gluckman, Max, “The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa” in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., eds. African Political Systems (London, 1940), 25–26Google Scholar. This book hugely influenced the nascent field of African studies, being reprinted no fewer than eleven times between 1941 and 1967.

²⁴ Gluckman may well have had Fredrick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis in mind, for it had been influentially invoked in relation to colonialism in Africa by three recent books: Walker, Eric, The Frontier Tradition in South Africa (Oxford, 1930)Google Scholar; Hancock, W. K., Survey of Commonwealth Affairs, Vol. 1 (London, 1937)Google Scholar; and MacCrone, I. D., Race Attitudes in South Africa (Oxford, 1937), 98–99Google Scholar.

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²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ It is now available in a second edition: Fuze, Magema M., The Black People and Whence they Came: A Zulu View, trans. Lugg, H. C., ed. Cope, A. T. (Pietermaritzburg, 1979)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Soga, J. Henderson, The South-Eastern Bantu (Aba-Nguni, Aba-Mbo, Ama-Lala) (Johannesburg, 1930)Google Scholar. He had the benefit (ibid., 387-88) of having read Fuze's book in the original Zulu (Abantu Abanmyama).

²⁹ Guy, Jeff, The Heretic: A Study of the Life of John William Colenso, 1814-1883 (Johannesburg, 1983), 242Google Scholar.

³⁰ The intellectual antecedents of the missionary thinking about African Eden and degeneration are explored in Grove, Richard, “Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourse and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 15(1989), 163–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³² Bryant, A. T., Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London, 1929), 72, 74, 79Google Scholar.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Wright, John and Webb, Colin de B., eds., The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples (Pietermaritzburg, 1976–2001)Google Scholar; henceforward JSA. The monumental project of translating Stuart's interviews with African informants into English and printing that text beside the Zulu original was begun by John Wright and the late Colin Webb in the early 1970s. Since the appearance of the first volume in 1976, four additional volumes have appeared. For the background of Stuart's work see Hamilton, , Terrific Majesty, 132–56Google Scholar.

³⁵ Soga, , South-Eastern Bantu, 3, 31, 36Google Scholar, emphais in original.

³⁶ Ibid., 101; Marks, Shula, “The Traditions of the Natal ‘Nguni:’ a Second Look at the Work of A. T. Bryant” in Thompson, Leonard, ed., African Societies in Southern Africa (London, 1969), 128Google Scholar. On the problems of dating these kinds of oral traditions, see Henige, David, The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimira (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar.

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³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Vansina, Jan, Oral History, trans. Wright, H. M. (London, 1965)Google Scholar, and idem., Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966).

⁴¹ See the preliminary report of conclusions: Oliver, Roland, “The Problem of the Bantu Expansion”, JAH 7(1966), 361–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² By the time Thompson moved to Yale in 1968 most of volume 1 (Oxford, 1969) had been completed.

⁴³ Omer-Cooper, J. D., The Zulu Aftermath: A Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London, 1966), 2–3Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Wilson, Monica and Thompson, Leonard, eds., Oxford History of South Africa, Volume I (Oxford, 1969), 341nGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 337.

⁴⁹ Smith, Alan, “The Struggle for Control of Southern Mocambique” (Ph. D., UCLA, 1970)Google Scholar, and idem, in Leonard Thompson, ed., African Societies in Southern Africa (London, 1969), 171-89.

⁵⁰ Vansina, Jan had helped launch the discussion with an influential article, “Long-Distance Trade Routes in Central Africa,” JAH 3(1962), 375–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Fage, J. D., A History of Africa (London, 1978), 69–70Google Scholar. The question of trade, politics, and state-building were canvassed in Gray, R. and Birmingham, D., eds., Pre-Colonial African Trade in Central and Eastern Africa before 1900 (London, 1970)Google Scholar, which included a chapter by Alan Smith on Delagoa Bay.

⁵¹ For the early consensus on trade and state-building at Zimbabwe see Gray, Richard, “Historians and Central Africa” in Fage, J. D., ed., Africa Discovers Her Past (London, 1970), 78Google Scholar.

⁵² Oliver, “Problem of the Bantu Expansion.”

⁵³ Maggs, Tim, “Three Decades of Iron Age Research in South Africa: Some Personal Reflections,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 48(1993), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁴ A11 were either supervised by or closely in touch with Shula Marks at the School of Oriental and African studies. By 1971 her research had diverged from Thompson and Oliver. Her highly influential seminar series, “Societies of Southern Africa” greatly encouraged the development of materialist interpretations in the 1970s and 1980s.

⁵⁵ Guy, Jeff, “Ecological Factors in the Rise of Shaka and the Zulu Kingdom” in Marks, S. and Atmore, A., eds., Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa (London, 1980), 102–19Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Slater, Henry, “Transitions in the Political Economy of South-East Africa before 1840” (Ph. D., University of Sussex, 1976)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Hedges, David, “Trade and Politics in Southern Mozambique and Zululand in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries” (Ph. D., University of London, 1978)Google Scholar. John Wright, through his work on the James Stuart Archive, began contributing to the debates in the 1970s, well before the completion of his dissertation, which embodies much of his earlier work: “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, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Philip Bonner, Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires: The Evolution and Dissolution of the Nineteenth-Century Swazi State (Cambridge, 1983), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Hedges, , “Trade and Politics,” 106–07Google Scholar.

⁶¹ There is no point in which popular writing about Shaka is so filled with romantic nonsense, as on this issue of the long-bladed, short stabbing umkonto. Careful attention to the original sources generally cited on this question shows that no one credits Shaka with the invention of the weapon itself. An early report (1825) of F. G. Farewell stated that the Zulu “charge with a single umconto, or spear, and each man must return with it from the field, or bring that of his enemy, otherwise he is sure to be put to death;” The Natal Papers, 1:21Google Scholar. Andrew Smith was told in 1832, that “Chaka was the first that introduced one hassegay [spear]. One day he sent for all his people about the kraal and called in all their hassegays. He put all, excepting one for each, into the fire and gave each one;” Kirby, P. R., ed., Andrew Smith and Natal (Cape Town, 1955), 46Google Scholar. Nathaniel Isaacs, who knew Shaka, reported that he “proceeded to introduce a new system of warfare. It had hitherto been the practice to carry several iron spears, and throw them at the enemy, besides the assegai or common spear … which he forbade under penalty of death;” Isaacs, N.Travels and Adventure in Eastern Africa, ed. Herman, Luis and Kirby, Percival R. (Cape Town, 1970), 150Google Scholar. Wright, John, “Dynamics of Power,” 41Google Scholar, who places the Thuli migration to the southern side of the Thukela well before the beginning of the nineteenth century, cites Maziyana's recollection that “as the Thuli fought their way along, … they stabbed their opponents at close quarters rather than throwing assegais at them as was the practice in more restrained forms of warfare.” It does not appear that Shaka's dictum was adopted by the chiefs who moved away to other parts of Africa. When Captain Owen encountered the Ndwandwe chief Soshangane at Delagoa Bay in 1822, he noted that attached to his shield were “his assagayes and spear; the only difference in these weapons is that the former is narrow in the blade and small for throwing, the later broad and long, with a stronger staff for the thrust;” Bryant copied this account into Olden Times, 450. William C. Harris reported that in 1836 Mzilikazi's soldiers rushed upon their foes, “stabbing with their short spears, of which a sheaf or bundle of five or six is taken when going to war;” The Wild Sports of Southern Africa (London, 1837[Cape Town], 1963, 150Google Scholar. The use of the stabbing spear for warfare was widespread, even on the western slopes of the Drakensberg. A picture of a “typical” Tswana man drawn to illustrate Arbousset, T. and Daumas, F., Narrative of an Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, trans. Brown, John C. (Cape Town, 1846[Cape Town, 1968]), 147Google Scholar, shows him carrying the short-handled spear. According to James Backhouse “the chief weapon of war among the Basuto is an assagai with a short handle, but they generally carry long ones with them;” Theal, G. M., ed., Basutoland Records, I, 1833–1852 (Cape Town, 1883[Cape Town, 1964), 1:28Google Scholar.

⁶² Lye, William F., “The Sotho Wars in the Interior of South Africa, 1822-1837” (Ph. D., UCLA, 1970), 48, 51Google Scholar. A visitor to the Tlhaping town of Latakoo in 1820 saw companies of soldiers “marching two and two as regularly as any trained regiment. Most of them were armed with four assagais or spears, and had also battle-axes, and shields made of the hide of an ox;” Campbell, John, Travels in South Africa (London, 1822[New York, 1967), 258Google Scholar.

⁶³ Bryant, Olden Times, 317, 641-42; Wright, , “Dynamics of Power,” 33, 35, 164, 168Google Scholar; Hedges, , “Trade and Politics,” 153Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Mackeurtan, Graham, The Cradle Days of Natal (1497-1845) (London, 1930), 8Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Natal Papers, 1: 5, emphasis addedGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ Oxford History, 1:118–19Google Scholar; Maggs, Tim, “The Iron Age Farming Communities” in Duminy, A. and Guest, B., eds., Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910 (Pietermaritzburg, 1989), 38–40Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Hall, Martin, “The Myth of the Zulu Homestead: Archaeology and Ethnography” Africa 54(1984), 65–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hall, M. and Maggs, T., “Nqabeni: A later Iron Age site in Zululand” in Iron Age Studies in Southern Africa, Goodwin Series of the South African Archaeological Society 3(1979), 159–76Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ This formed the basis of his Ph. D. dissertation, published later as Iron Age Communities of the Southern Highveld (Pietermaritzburg, 1976)Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Francis Farewell's diary entry for 4 September 1825, as read by Andrew Smith in 1832; Andrew Smith in Natal, 64. Cloete, Henry, Five Lectures on the Emigration of the Dutch Farmers from the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and their Settlement in the District of Natal until their Formal Submission to Her Majesty's Authority, in the Year 1843 (Cape Town, 1856), 83Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Maggs, , “Three Decades,” 74Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Steyn, M.et al, “Late Iron Age Gold Burials from Thulamela (Pafuri Region, Kruger National Park),” South African Archaeological Bulletin 5 (1998), 73–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Malyn Newitt points out that “large unified kingdoms” emerged “as early as the sixteenth century” around Delagoa Bay in close proximity to the territory which became Zululand; A History of Mozambique (London, 1995), 257Google Scholar.

⁷² The word was certainly in use by the sixteenth century when it first appears in printed records; Oxford History 1:118Google Scholar.

⁷³ The rest of the 153 individuals in the volumes 1 to 5 were white men. It has been argued that the African testimony in the Stuart Archive “affirms the notion of a major transition” in the scale and complexity of state organization; Hamilton, Carolyn, “Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom” (M. A., University of the Witwatersrand, 1986), 17Google Scholar. While dissenting from that opinion, I cannot agree, as another scholar has argued, that the Stuart Archive is “a tainted well;” Cobbing, Julian, “A Tainted Well, The Objectives, Historical Fantasies, and Working Methods of James Stuart, with Counter Argument,” Journal of Natal and Zulu History 11(1988), 115–54Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Testimony of Makando ka Dhlovu, recorded in 1902, JSA 3:158.

⁷⁵ Testimony of Hoye ka Soxalase recorded in 1921, JSA 1:169; see also JSA 4:89.

⁷⁶ JSA 1:17, 290; 2:187, 247; 3:196,227; 4:263; 5: 43.

⁷⁷ Testimony of Baleni ka Silwana recorded in 1914, JSA 1:35.

⁷⁸ JSA 1:5,17-18; 4:122,264, 311;

⁷⁹ JSA 2:299.

⁸⁰ JSA, 2:54.

⁸¹ Omer-Cooper, , Zulu Aftermath, 51, 59, 64, 131Google Scholar.

⁸² See note 61 above.

⁸³ Soga, South-Eastern Bantu, vii, 401, and genealogical charts on unnumbered pages.

⁸⁴ Bryant, Olden Times, 35 and chart opp. 314. A similar point about the shallowness of the Zulu lineage is made by Stuart's witness, Stephen Mini in JSA 3:135.

⁸⁵ However, some old Swazi men interviewed at the turn of the twentieth-century admitted the possibility that the name may have been taken from a much earlier chief in the ruling lineage; JSA 1:140, 3:134.

⁸⁶ Hamilton, , Terrific Majesty, 56Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Bryant, , Olden Times, 403Google Scholar; Wright, , “Dynamics of Power,” 313Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Oxford History, 1:81Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ C. R. Boxer, The Tragic History of the Sea 1589-1622 (Cambridge, 1959), 70.

⁹⁰ See for example: “Africa” by James Wyld, FO 925/4255, Map Collection of the Public Record Office, London; “The Continent and Islands of Africa with all the Recent Explorations, delineated by John Purdy, 1824 edition, catalogue G69, Royal Geographical Society, London; and “A New Map of Africa” by John Cary, 1846, catalogue G.103, Royal Geographical Society, London.

⁹¹ Natal Papers, 1: 8Google Scholar; Bryant, , Olden Times, 290Google Scholar. See also Casalis, E., The Basutos or Twenty-three Years in South Africa (London, 1861[Cape Town 1965]), xviGoogle Scholar.

⁹² They should not be confused with the nineteenth-century grouping of the same name which appears in the indexes to the Stuart Archive. That small group under chief Mkhize was said by many informants to have come from Swaziland.

⁹³ Krige, Eileen, The Social System of the Zulus (2d ed.: Pietermaritzburg, 1950), 3Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Ayliff, John and Whiteside, Joseph, History of the Abambo, Generally known as Fingos (Butterworth, South Africa, 1912), 1–11Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Bryant, Olden Times, chart opp. 314. Beyond this point the historian cannot venture. As Hedges remarks in “Trade and Politics,” 162, “relations between the royal Ndwandwe central lineages and those of the related Gasa, Ncwaneni-Jere, Msane and parts of the Nxumalo lineages are shrouded in impenetrable mists.”

⁹⁶ Isaac Schapera cited the unbelievable figure of 100,000 in Cambridge History of the British Empire, VIII, South Africa (2d ed., Cambridge, 1963), 38Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Farewell to Somerset, 6 September 1824, in Leverton, B. J. T., ed., Important Cape Documents, 4: Records of Natal, Vol. 1, 1823-August 1828, 36–38Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Bryant, , Olden Times, 647Google Scholar. Leonard Thompson, more committed to a large-scale Zulu state, preferred Isaacs' estimate of 40,000; Oxford History, I, 344Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Arbousset, T. and Daumas, F., Narrative of an Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, trans. Brown, J. C. (Cape Town, 1968), 165Google Scholar.

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¹⁰¹ Oxford History, 1:344Google Scholar; Beinart, William, The Political Economy of Pondoland, 1860-1930 (Cambridge, 1982), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁰³ This last hypothesis was first advanced by Julian Cobbing in a series of published and unpublished papers in the late 1980s; Cobbings' theories were subsequently the subject of a conference, whose proceedings have been published as The Mfecane Aftermath, ed. Hamilton, Carolyn (Johannesburg, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ This was the issue which made some historians baulk at accepting Cobbing's argument that violence emanating from the colonial state stimulated the formation of the Zulu kingdom. See Omer-Cooper, John, “The Mfecane Survives its Critics,” Mfecane Aftermath, 277–98Google Scholar.