Fighting (Over) Zulu: Race, Empire, and Zulu Representations in the British Metropole 1820s - 1910 Open Access

Abstract

The first Britons to encounter the Zulu, a Black kingdom from the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa, were traders and travelers in the 1820s. Their subsequent travelogues and histories in the 1830s begin this thesis’s timeline of depictions of the Zulu in the British metropole. From the earliest understandings of the Zulu in Britain, a notion of a unique people defined by a supposedly inherent violence and militance evolved alongside general beliefs of the Zulu as “primitive.”

Primarily through media and ethnographic literature, this thesis analyzes the ways in which Zulu representations were consistent and inconsistent with changing notions of British racial and imperial thinking. My first chapter deploys travelogues, missionary ethnographies, and defenses of the Zulu alongside official representations of the state of the Anglo-Zulu frontier, tracking how unofficial images of the Zulu at home merged with support for imperial-led civilizing. The chapter also reveals how forms of scientific racism were applied to the case of the Zulu at least two decades before what is usually thought to be its wider dissemination in the 1860s. My second chapter explores the changes that the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, specifically the defeat at Isandlwana and victory at Rorke’s Drift, caused in metropolitan understandings of the Zulu and the imperial British mission. For a time, metropolitan representations centered the Zulu as the quintessential “noble-savage” – a gray-space between the “primitive” and “civilized” – to provide a counterpoint to British imperial civilizers, as demonstrated in artwork and the writings of H.R. Haggard. This thesis’s chronological and thematic approach demonstrates the precarity with which imperial societies came to “know” their colonial opponents and subjects, as well as the implications for and the importance of context in revising our current images of the past. 

Table of Contents

Introduction.......................................................... 1

I.   An “Interesting Tribe of Savages”: The Zulu in mid-Nineteenth-Century British Culture. 9

II.  “Noble Savages…Not Inclined to come to Terms”: The Anglo Zulu War, Imperial Insecurities, and the Fluidity of Images of the Zulu...................................................... 51

E. Mythologizing Zulu: The Legacies of Imperial Memories and Identities...................... 86

Bibliography...................................................... 99

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	History
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	History, European History, African History, Modern
Keyword	British Empire Zulu Imperialism Scientific Racism Race
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Brian Vick, Emory University
Committee Members	Sam Cherribi, Emory University Tehila Sasson, Emory University

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