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Firearms in Southern Africa: A survey1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Shula Marks  and
Anthony Atmore
Shula Marks
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Anthony Atmore
Affiliation:
Centre of International and Area Studies, University of London
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Extract

The relationships of the peoples of southern Africa after the establishment and expansion of the white settlement in the mid-seventeenth century can be seen in terms of both conflict and interdependence, both resistance and collaboration. The conflict often split over into warfare, not only between black and white, but also within both groups. As time passed, firearms came to be used by ever-widening circles of the combatants, often as much the result of the increased collaboration and interdependence between peoples as of the increased conflict. As Inez Sutton has pointed out, ‘in contrast to most of the rest of [sub-Saharan] Africa, the presence of a settler population ensured that the supply of arms was the most modern rather than the most obsolete’, and on the whole non-whites were acutely aware of changes in the manufacture of firearms in the nineteenth century.

Type
Papers on Firearms in Sub-Saharan Africa, II
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1971 , pp. 517 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

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4 For the use of this term and an elaboration of the responses of the Khoisan to the Dutch, see S. Marks, ‘Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, forthcoming.

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36 Various laws restricting the supply of arms and ammunition and providing for the registration of guns had been passed in Natal from 1859 onwards. The last of these was Act no. x of 1906 which made the permission of the Secretary for Native Affairs necessary before Africans could have guns. Chiefs with registered guns were allowed 2 lb. gunpowder and 200 rounds of ammunition, while ordinary Africans were permitted 1―2 lb. and 50 rounds. See Marks, S., Reluctant Rebellion (Oxford, 1970), 186.Google Scholar

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40 The exceptions are the Ndebele who became less successful from the 1860s and 1870s once the Shona and Tswana acquired firearms. See Atmore, Chirenje and Mudenge below.

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51 Here the sources are vast.

52 See Bonner, P., ‘African Participation in the South African War’, unpublished M.A., London, 1966.Google Scholar