Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
The earliest substantial references we have to the reaction of Zulu to firearms date from the 1820s and they show that any previous contact with such weapons must have been slight. The diaries of the English traders who arrived in the kingdom in the latter part of the 1820s point to a widespread fear of firearms on the part of Shaka's subjects—a fear not necessarily related to the missiles the guns discharged, but to the noise and smoke they emitted when fired. Dingane, in a discussion on strategy with his councillors which Isaacs overheard in 1830, said that:
if the white people were to come here to fight us, they need not fire at us, as the report from their pieces would strike you with terror, and while you ran one way, the Malongoes (whites) would drive off your cattle the other.
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26 C.O. 179/132, 9733, Memo by Fairfield on information given by C. H. Weheusen.
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