Kingdom in Crisis

For historians to ask new questions has the important effect of alerting them to unfamiliar aspects of familiar problems, and to unsuspected data in well-worked sources. So it is with the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, where the field has apparently been thoroughly traversed. Yet, until recently, the war has been treated from the standpoint of the invading British, and in the manner traditional to Victorian colonial campaigns. The Zulu dimension to the struggle, which should embrace not only an appreciation of Zulu military capability and planning, but also an understanding of the structure of Zulu society and the functioning of the Zulu state, has consequently suffered neglect. Clearly, though, any attempt to comprehend the efforts of the Zulu kingdom to meet the challenge of invasion by a well-equipped, professional British army must take into account the interrelationship of all these elements.