Did a Zulu King Massacre the British Army?

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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: Recounting the time a South African chief was outgunned, but not outfoxed.

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Cetshwayo kaMpande
Alex. Bassano/The Ruin of Zululand




Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage.

Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 84: Which Zulu king led his men to victory over British invaders and mounted warfare that killed a French “prince”?

“The distress, anxiety, and humiliation felt here are indescribable,” a correspondent for the Irish Times wrote from Cape Town, South Africa, on Jan. 24, 1879. Here’s the surprise: He wasn’t referring to the subjugation of the South African people by the powers of Europe, but to the British army, which two days earlier had suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of Zulu warriors on the borderland between the Zulu kingdom and Natal. However short-lived the Zulus’ victory was, the Battle of Isandlwana remains one of the all-time David versus Goliath stories.

The leader of the Zulus was King Cetshwayo, the nephew-successor of the legendary Shaka Zulu (ca. 1787-1828), who, early in the 19th century, had united scores of disparate chiefdoms to form his kingdom. Cetshwayo had inherited Shaka’s boldness, and the rout of the British at Isandlwana by his army at the start of the Anglo-Zulu War shocked the world. That it would soon prove to be only a temporary setback to the British, an aberrant prequel to an age of colonial conquest in southern Africa, makes it all the more fascinating and poignant.

Cetshwayo’s Early Years and Rise to the Zulu Throne

Cetshwayo kaMpande was born in emLambongwenya in South Africa around 1826. His uncle Shaka presided over the Zulu Kingdom from 1816 until his death in 1828. His father, Mpande kaSenzangakhona, was Shaka’s half-brother and became king of the Zulus in 1840, initially naming Cetshwayo his successor. Mpande, however, had 29 wives and, as time passed, considered naming a different wife, Monase, as “chief wife,” which would have made her son, Mublazi, his heir. That wasn’t all, as Michael Mahoney writes in the Dictionary of African Biography. Mpande also was jealous that Cetshwayo was becoming more popular than he. When it came to choosing sides, as John Laband writes in his 1995 book Rope of Sand: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century, most stood with Cetshwayo, and at the 1856 battle of Ndondakusuka, his side triumphed and his rival heir, Mublazi, was killed. From then on, Cetshwayo’s father was a leader in name only, while Cetshwayo was regarded as the Zulus’ true king. In 1872, it became official.

Relations With the British

The British, already controlling nearby Natal, had intervened by recognizing Cetshwayo as heir to the throne. But the British weren’t exactly honest brokers. As Mahoney explains, they believed their endorsement had made Cetshwayo king and, thus, their puppet to be removed if and when they saw fit. It didn’t take long for conflicts to emerge. Cetshwayo resented the British for failing to defend the Zulus against the Dutch when the British annexed the Transvaal territory in 1877, and in response, the British began cataloging his offenses, including allowing Zulu raiders to cross the border into Natal.

Chief among Cetshwayo’s opponents was the British high commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, who thought the British had an obligation to “civilize” the blacks of southern Africa. Really, Frere hoped to forge a confederation of all the southern African territories and then be named governor over them. This, of course, meant ousting Cetshwayo, whom Frere demonized as an “ ‘ignorant and blood-thirsty tyrant’ ” atop a “ ‘frightfully efficient manslaying war-machine,’ ” according to Laband.

In December 1878, the British gave Cetshwayo an ultimatum: Hand over his raiders, pay an indemnity of 600 cattle, disband his military and recognize Britain’s authority, or face invasion. When Cetshwayo refused, the British had the pretext they needed to invade the Zulu kingdom.

War With Britain

The invasion began Jan. 11, 1879, with the British crossing the Tugela River at Rorke’s Drift into northwest Zululand (another column of troops advanced along the Indian Ocean to the southeast). The British had fewer than 2,000 troops but superior firepower. The Zulu weapon was the assegai—essentially a spear—but they had more men, perhaps as many as 12,000, Saul David notes in his 2004 book Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879. Taking a defensive position, Cetshwayo ordered his warriors to stay on their side of the Natal border. But if attacked, he was ready.

The Battle of Isandlwana was joined on the morning of Jan. 22, 1879, when the British, under the command of Lord Chelmsford, crossed over the Buffalo (Mzinyathi) River at Rorke’s Drift. Dividing his army, Chelmsford foolishly left a third of his force behind at Isandlwana under Col. H.B. Pulleine. On the scene was Frank Bourne, a sergeant in the British 24th Regiment, who later wrote:


Lord Chelmsford learned that the enemy was in force ahead of the Camp, and he moved out on the morning of the twenty-second with nearly half his force to attack them. But as he advanced they disappeared, and in his absence his Camp was attacked and overwhelmed by four thousand Zulus. So swift was the disaster that the few survivors who got away could give no reliable account of it, but the evidence of the dead who were afterwards found and buried where they lay told the unvarying tale of groups of men fighting back to back until the last cartridge was fired. ... Fully twelve hundred men were killed. And by half past one no white man was alive in Isandhlwana Camp.


Including the battle in his list of 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, our old friend Joel A. Rogers claimed that Cetshwayo, “King of Zululand, South Africa, massacred an entire British army sent against him in 1879, and a few days later defeated and killed the Prince Napoleon, heir to the French throne.” Was he right?

Although Cetshwayo’s Zulu warriors did not kill every British soldier in sight, they came close. According to Laband, the British lost 52 officers, 727 white troops and 471 black troops.

But what about Rogers’ other claim, that the heir to the French throne, Prince Napoleon Imperial, was “defeated and killed”? According to Ian Knight, author of the 2003 account The Zulu War 1879, the Prince Imperial was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Napoleon III, who had risen to power in France in 1848 only to be chased by the Prussians into exile in England 30 years later. There, Knight writes, Napoleon III’s “young son—also called Louis—became the heir in exile to Bonapartist dreams of a restoration.” Joining the British military, the Prince Imperial was allowed to go to the Zulu kingdom as an observer. Out on patrol away from the British camp there, he was, indeed, killed by Zulu forces on June 1, 1879!

So Rogers was right that Prince Napoleon was killed in battle, but, really, it was a stretch to say that an observer like him had been “defeated.” Also, it happened more than four months after the Battle of Isandlwana, and while Rogers chose to end his story with the Zulus on top (he even made the exaggerated claim that “Cetshwayo taught the Europeans the skirmish line of warfare”), their triumph at Isandlwana was anything but a done deal.

After the Battle

The reporter for the Irish Times referred to Cetshwayo’s forces at Isandlwana as that “overwhelming Zulu Army” while remarking that “[t]he greatest gloom and consternation” had swept over “the Cape Colony” when news of the British defeat arrived. Clamoring for a response, the Times argued that “the moral effect of [the Zulu] victory on the morale of the natives in the British colonies is likely to cause new risings, unless the prestige of the British force is recovered by a brilliant victory.”

Clearly, the Zulu king had attracted Europe’s attention with his victory at Isandlwana. And the British response was swift—and deadly. In fact, later that same day—Jan. 22, 1879—another Zulu force under Cetshwayo’s brother Dabulamanzi kaMpande was repulsed when it attacked the British camp at Rorke’s Drift. The fight continued into the next day, but in the end, the approximately 120 British soldiers stationed at the depot there gunned down 500-plus Zulu warriors. (For more, see Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Frank Bourne was one of those British soldiers. He recalled: “To show their fearlessness and their contempt for the red coats and small numbers, they [the Zulu warriors] tried to leap the parapet, and at times seized our bayonets, only to be shot down. Looking back, one cannot but admire their fanatical bravery.”

As the Anglo-Zulu War rolled on, the British, it seemed, racked up one devastating victory after another. These included the Battle of Kambula on March 29 and at Gingindlovu on April 2, when, according to Britannica, “more than 1,000 Zulu were killed. Chelmsford’s troops then moved on Cetshwayo’s royal villages at Ulundi, where on July 4, 1879, they inflicted a final defeat on Cetshwayo’s surviving soldiers. Cetshwayo himself was captured in August, and the Zulu nation was at the mercy of the British government, which had not yet considered how to incorporate Zululand into its Southern Africa holdings.”

A prisoner of war, Cetshwayo was exiled to Cape Town and later transferred to a farm in the Cape Flats. Still, the Zulu king had allies, including the Anglican bishop of Natal, John William Colenso, who successfully argued for Cetshwayo’s release. In 1882, Cetshwayo traveled to London to make his own appeal to the British authorities that he should be reinstalled as king. And he was, sort of, over a much smaller territory and under British supervision in January 1883. By then, however, a number of rival chiefs had enhanced their own power under the British, so that when Cetshwayo returned, they were ready to battle his still-loyal forces in a civil war.

Cetshwayo did not live to see how that war ended. He died Feb. 8, 1884. The cause is unclear, but many of his allies believed he had been poisoned. Cetshwayo was buried near the Nkandla Forest, and artifacts from the wagon that carried his body are displayed at the Ondini Museum near the former capital of the Zulu kingdom in Ulundi. King Cetshwayo was succeeded by his son Dinuzulu, but the rule of the independent Zulu kings was over.

In Context

Cetshwayo’s short-lived victory at Isandlwana was rare at a time when the powers of Europe were crushing the kingdoms of Africa into “a continent-wide submission to colonial rule,” John Reader writes in his sweeping, monumental history, Africa: A Biography of the Continent. The other African rulers to fall in the scramble included Lat Dior of Cayor (Senegal); Samori Ture of West Africa; Abushiri of East Africa, whom the Germans strung up for his valiant defense; and, as Reader describes, “Lobengula of the Ndebele”; “Prempeh I of the Asante”; “Mwanga of the Buganda”; “Kabarega of the Bunyoro”; and “Behazin of Dahomey.”

It looked like Ethiopia was going to go the same way. Miraculously, its leader, King Menelik, defeated the Italian army at Adowa on March 1, 1896, carrying for divine protection what Ethiopians claim to this day was the actual Ark of the Covenant, purportedly still housed at St. Mary’s Church in Axum. Though Menelik wasn’t able to take Eritrea back from the Italians, he kept Ethiopia secure within its borders, making it, Reader says, “the only African state that successfully resisted European colonization.”

Over and again, African kings issued ultimatums to the Europeans to leave their lands alone, and over and again, the Europeans swept those demands away. Why? According to Reason, even though the armies of Europe were outnumbered along “ ‘the thin white line’ of colonial authority,” they had overwhelming military technology, and when they developed quinine to prevent malaria, their advantage was secured. On one side of the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the 19th century, Jim Crow segregation was taking hold over African Americans, while on the other, the groundwork was being laid for extraction, oppression and colonization of Africans and their resources.

Cetshwayo in Film

Of note, Chief Cetshwayo was played by one of his descendents, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, in the popular 1964 British film Zulu, which, not surprisingly, focused on the British victory at Rorke’s Drift after its defeat at Isandlwana that morning. The film, which introduced Michael Caine in his first starring role, premiered in the United States on June 17, 1964 (50 years ago tomorrow!), a few weeks before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was beginning his long prison sentence on Robben Island. “t’s hard to get around the fact that Zulu features more Blacks literally tossing spears and taking bullets than any movie Hollywood ever made,” John Strausbaugh writes in his 2007 book Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture.

It wasn’t until 1979, near the tail end of the blaxploitation film movement, that Hollywood got around to making the prequel, Zulu Dawn, which centered on the British defeat at Isandlwana. That movie starred Bob Hoskins, Burt Lancaster and Peter O’Toole, with the role of Cetshwayo played by South African actor Simon Sabela.

To Americans, the colonists who defeated the British on North American soil in 1776 are heroes, the fathers of our great country. In stark contrast, many who flocked to see Zulu 50 years ago saw those noble black warriors fighting for the same thing in Zululand as savages. Is race the difference? Who knows. Had Cetshwayo won the battle and the war, he might have been remembered as the George Washington of South Africa. But because Cetshwayo lost, he became “the last king of the independent Zulu nation” while the role of nation-builder had to wait another 115 years to be filled by the man known throughout his nation as Madiba: the immortal Nelson Mandela.


As always, you can find more “Amazing Facts About the Negro” on The Root, and check back each week as we count to 100.


Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
 
Dope! I just learned briefly about this from a guy who comes from that area of Africa.
 
Didn't read the whole article yet but I'm anxious to drop this bit.

The Zulus fought off the British for 100 years. :D
 
It was a British regiment they defeated.

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Didn't read the whole article yet but I'm anxious to drop this bit.

The Zulus fought off the British for 100 years. :D

100 years? from when to when?

Shortly after this battle, the brits kicked their asses and had that King living on a reservation in exile. When they brought him back, he was killed by another Zulu king if I recall correctly.
 
20,000 vs 1500. yeah, it happened once.

If them dummies woulda invested in some damn guns instead of spears and cowhide shields, South Africa woulda been something else.

They did have rifles before the battle of Isandlwana. The looted many rifles from the British after that battle. It's sad South Africa could of been a power like Japan if it wasn't located in an important strategic area where ever country in Europe wanted to control.
 
They did have rifles before the battle of Isandlwana. The looted many rifles from the British after that battle. It's sad South Africa could of been a power like Japan if it wasn't located in an important strategic area where ever country in Europe wanted to control.

a few muskets yeah. They should been able to reverse engineer and make their own by then. Europeans had already been heavy in West Africa for 200 years by then, Northern Africa for thousands, East as well. Arabs too. I'm disappointed

The Portugese tribes came first and beat Whoever they ran into. Then the Dutch tribes came and beat the Portugese. Then the Dutch had to run from the English tribes and they ran up and kicked the Xhosa and Zulu tribes who had been beating each others ass, as well as the Khoi and San.

The fuckin Zulus ho pride themselves on warrior culture, shoulda stepped their shit up man. ugh.
 
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20,000 vs 1500. yeah, it happened once.

If them dummies woulda invested in some damn guns instead of spears and cowhide shields, South Africa woulda been something else.
You call people dummies, show us why you are so clever. No
I will not ask you to prove why you are not a coward. You are
probably one of those who would run, rather than defend his
land and family, by walking up to a machine gun with nothing
but a knobkerry, and cowhide shield..
 
You call people dummies, show us why you are so clever. No

I will not ask you to prove why you are not a coward. You are

probably one of those who would run, rather than defend his

land and family, by walking up to a machine gun with nothing

but a knobkerry, and cowhide shield..


You're emotional lol.

I woulda been one of those guys with a musket telling the tribe leader "hey man, we need to take these rifles they got and figure out how to make more of em."


But I already said that.
 
a few muskets yeah. They should been able to reverse engineer and make their own by then. Europeans had already been heavy in West Africa for 200 years by then, Northern Africa for thousands, East as well. Arabs too. I'm disappointed

The Portugese tribes came first and beat Whoever they ran into. Then the Dutch tribes came and beat the Portugese. Then the Dutch had to run from the English tribes and they ran up and kicked the Xhosa and Zulu tribes who had been beating each others ass, as well as the Khoi and San.

The fuckin Zulus ho pride themselves on warrior culture, shoulda stepped their shit up man. ugh.

You are an idiot. You obviously know nothing about metallurgy. To make a rifle,
you have to make so many other tools before you extrude, bore or cast the barrels; you
need to be able to strengthen iron into steel, and then make wire that is hard and
but flexible, to create the springs needed for the firing pin. You need to cast the
the trigger, etc etc. This is all before you find out how make gunpowder...and even
after that, you have to manufacture catridges...

This was 1879 you idiot, almost 80 years since the industrial revolution. The carbines
carried by the English were being manufactured in factories, not by isolated gun
smiths. The gun powder was being made in chemical factories, and bullets pressed
too..

The Zulu were preindustrial society, against an industrial society. The only things that
we Africans had, were loyalty, courage and patriotism. Qualities idiots like you do not
know.
 
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It was a British regiment they defeated.

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We defeated the English. They came with their rifles, we came with our courage.
 
You're emotional lol.

I woulda been one of those guys with a musket telling the tribe leader "hey man, we need to take these rifles they got and figure out how to make more of em."


But I already said that.

I am telling you the truth. If the Zulu had a pyramid, none of you
would be this derisive. We know you.
 
I am telling you the truth. If the Zulu had a pyramid, none of you
would be this derisive. We know you.


Lol c'mon man you oughtta know me better than that. I'm not one of them pyramid worshippers.


I love my west Africans, South Africans.... You Bantus or whatever the fuck you call yourself lol.


Just turns out this point in history,
I disagree with the path these particular leaders took.

Spears and cowhide shields against guns? Poor choice.


It took 15000 to beat 1200. That's pitiful.

This is why we're where we are. We gotta learn from the mistakes of the past
 
Lol c'mon man you oughtta know me better than that. I'm not one of them pyramid worshippers.


I love my west Africans, South Africans.... You Bantus or whatever the fuck you call yourself lol.


Just turns out this point in history,
I disagree with the path these particular leaders took.

Spears and cowhide shields against guns? Poor choice.


It took 15000 to beat 1200. That's pitiful.

This is why we're where we are. We gotta learn from the mistakes of the past
OK.. Your cowardly gay ass gets a pass on that one, maybe even an apology
...Maybe you do not love pyramids



I do not know what the fuck you are complaining about. What do you do if you have
no guns? You surrender? It was an unequal struggle between two societies. One
had spears, one had guns. That is what you do when the other side has superior
technology. The Russians won the 2nd world war while sacrificing 27 million people.
The Chines, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese who lost millions to 55, 000 Americans..
That is the price you pay for freedom. Unlike you, we do not believe in surrender.
 
Nizinga in here responding to every post, nigga shit the fuck up haven't you realized by now that no one gives a shit what you say?
 
You are an idiot. You obviously know nothing about metallurgy. To make a rifle,
you have to make so many other tools before you extrude, bore or cast the barrels; you
need to be able to strengthen iron into steel, and then make wire that is hard and
but flexible, to create the springs needed for the firing pin. You need to cast the
the trigger, etc etc. This is all before you find out how make gunpowder...and even
after that, you have to manufacture catridges...

This was 1879 you idiot, almost 80 years since the industrial revolution. The carbines
carried by the English were being manufactured in factories, not by isolated gun
smiths. The gun powder was being made in chemical factories, and bullets pressed
too..

The Zulu were preindustrial society, against an industrial society. The only things that
we Africans had, were loyalty, courage and patriotism. Qualities idiots like you do not
know.

I know what it takes to make guns for sure. And I'm aware that the Africans in that area were pre industrial. It's a shame.

West Africa had been through this already. They had been in contact with westerners long enough to have seen what came. They also decided to utilize human swarm warfare instead of guerrilla warfare KNOWING THE WHITE BOYS HAD GATLIN GUNS AND RIFLES.

In that battle alone, they woulda had access to about 1000 rifles. No record of training with them, or learning about HOW to make them. I said all this already. The competition alone should have been something to push them into industry and trade.

We don't come from dummies, but I wanna know why they didn't even come close to making these things happen. I don't clai to know fully, but I have heard rumors.




OK.. Your cowardly gay ass gets a pass on that one, maybe even an apology
...Maybe you do not love pyramids



I do not know what the fuck you are complaining about. What do you do if you have
no guns? You surrender? It was an unequal struggle between two societies. One
had spears, one had guns. That is what you do when the other side has superior
technology. The Russians won the 2nd world war while sacrificing 27 million people.
The Chines, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese who lost millions to 55, 000 Americans..
That is the price you pay for freedom. Unlike you, we do not believe in surrender.

You don't surrender, but you damn sure don't round up ALL your men and full frontal assault against guns. They had already met the Dutch nearly 100 years earlier. They knew about western technology.

There a HUGE AREA between surrender and strategy and upgrading your arms.

Let's talk about that and be honest about our mistakes instead of yelling at each other


I know you study warfare and combat history. It's a little embarrassing as a descendant of Africans to see guys walking around with spears and cowhide shields like that's the shit, when truthfully thats what got their asses kicked.

If Shake Zulu's ass was able to get them from throwing spears to carrying the metal sword type weapons (I don't remember the name), then we should've been able to adapt to guns quicker.

I don't hear of West African Navies, I hear of warrior societies but they tended to not take hints from their enemies and build off of it like all those others you named.

The Japanese got their asses handed to em too, but you see what they came back with. What happened?
 
100 years? from when to when?

Shortly after this battle, the brits kicked their asses and had that King living on a reservation in exile. When they brought him back, he was killed by another Zulu king if I recall correctly.

You know what I am wrong about that. I heard that but I think I heard it wrong. I think it was Dr. John Henrik Clarke I heard it from. I just did some searching and its this was the worst defeat of the British in 100 years by the Zulu.
 
You know what I am wrong about that. I heard that but I think I heard it wrong. I think it was Dr. John Henrik Clarke I heard it from. I just did some searching and its this was the worst defeat of the British in 100 years by the Zulu.


Unfortunately it's one of the the only times Ive ever heard of a win we had militarily. Shit, we won more over here in American plantation revolts. And of course Haiti- well all the Caribbean.
 
Unfortunately it's one of the the only times Ive ever heard of a win we had militarily. Shit, we won more over here in American plantation revolts. And of course Haiti- well all the Caribbean.

Hey to me that over-scores the victories to be even greater, since they weren't won militarily. It goes to show what common people can do when backed into a corner, they band together and organize and become very dangerous.
 
I know what it takes to make guns for sure. And I'm aware that the Africans in that area were pre industrial. It's a shame.

West Africa had been through this already. They had been in contact with westerners long enough to have seen what came. They also decided to utilize human swarm warfare instead of guerrilla warfare KNOWING THE WHITE BOYS HAD GATLIN GUNS AND RIFLES.

In that battle alone, they woulda had access to about 1000 rifles. No record of training with them, or learning about HOW to make them. I said all this already. The competition alone should have been something to push them into industry and trade.

We don't come from dummies, but I wanna know why they didn't even come close to making these things happen. I don't clai to know fully, but I have heard rumors.






You don't surrender, but you damn sure don't round up ALL your men and full frontal assault against guns. They had already met the Dutch nearly 100 years earlier. They knew about western technology.

There a HUGE AREA between surrender and strategy and upgrading your arms.

Let's talk about that and be honest about our mistakes instead of yelling at each other


I know you study warfare and combat history. It's a little embarrassing as a descendant of Africans to see guys walking around with spears and cowhide shields like that's the shit, when truthfully thats what got their asses kicked.

If Shake Zulu's ass was able to get them from throwing spears to carrying the metal sword type weapons (I don't remember the name), then we should've been able to adapt to guns quicker.

I don't hear of West African Navies, I hear of warrior societies but they tended to not take hints from their enemies and build off of it like all those others you named.

The Japanese got their asses handed to em too, but you see what they came back with. What happened?

Samory Toure was so close to re-engineering a rifle but his gun failed and unfortunately he had to flee before he could refine the rifle. But you're correct, our cultures did not embrace science and technology quickly which put us at a disadvantage. However we did have some fierce armies, I.e. the Asantes which literally means "Because of War". The mopped up the British for over 100 yrs and they did it with guns.
 
Unfortunately it's one of the the only times Ive ever heard of a win we had militarily. Shit, we won more over here in American plantation revolts. And of course Haiti- well all the Caribbean.
The fact that Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique, were
won by war is not factor???
 
I know what it takes to make guns for sure. And I'm aware that the Africans in that area were pre industrial. It's a shame.

West Africa had been through this already. They had been in contact with westerners long enough to have seen what came. They also decided to utilize human swarm warfare instead of guerrilla warfare KNOWING THE WHITE BOYS HAD GATLIN GUNS AND RIFLES.

In that battle alone, they woulda had access to about 1000 rifles. No record of training with them, or learning about HOW to make them. I said all this already. The competition alone should have been something to push them into industry and trade.

We don't come from dummies, but I wanna know why they didn't even come close to making these things happen. I don't clai to know fully, but I have heard rumors.






You don't surrender, but you damn sure don't round up ALL your men and full frontal assault against guns. They had already met the Dutch nearly 100 years earlier. They knew about western technology.

There a HUGE AREA between surrender and strategy and upgrading your arms.

Let's talk about that and be honest about our mistakes instead of yelling at each other


I know you study warfare and combat history. It's a little embarrassing as a descendant of Africans to see guys walking around with spears and cowhide shields like that's the shit, when truthfully thats what got their asses kicked.

If Shake Zulu's ass was able to get them from throwing spears to carrying the metal sword type weapons (I don't remember the name), then we should've been able to adapt to guns quicker.

I don't hear of West African Navies, I hear of warrior societies but they tended to not take hints from their enemies and build off of it like all those others you named.

The Japanese got their asses handed to em too, but you see what they came back with. What happened?


I find it offensive that you have the gall to call people who fought almost barehanded
against repeating rifles dummies. I really do. If I started deriding the condition and
experience of black Americans in similar terms, you would get angry. So I demand
that you retract the "dummies" expression, and find a less insulting way to express
your opinions.
 
Samory Toure was so close to re-engineering a rifle but his gun failed and unfortunately he had to flee before he could refine the rifle. But you're correct, our cultures did not embrace science and technology quickly which put us at a disadvantage. However we did have some fierce armies, I.e. the Asantes which literally means "Because of War". The mopped up the British for over 100 yrs and they did it with guns.



Now we're having a conversation. Good info. I'm not aware that the Asantes "mopped up" the British for that 100 years but hey, school me.

The fact that Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique, were
won by war is not factor???


Now we're REALLY having a conversation. I wasn't aware of all of those. Keep talking to me and informing me. You tend to hold out until someone pisses you off lol. Let's TALK ABOUT IT.

In this particular story, people are excited that 15000 Zulus killed 1200 whites. I don't find this a particularly great or inspiring story. There are others that ARE indeed great so I don't have to blow hot air into a story that is really not to me.

Talk to me about Angola and the others. Those sound much better.

I find it offensive that you have the gall to call people who fought almost barehanded
against repeating rifles dummies. I really do. If I started deriding the condition and
experience of black Americans in similar terms, you would get angry. So I demand
that you retract the "dummies" expression, and find a less insulting way to express
your opinions.


Dude, I'm not some white boy and further more me and mine suffer from the consequences as much as you do.

Are you South African? Lemme know, you're very vague about it. Do you not refer to people as "buggers" and such? I brought up Wole Soyinka who served time in prison and fights for his people. Since you don't like him or his choices you called him names. I list African artists, but since they're too euro for you you have shit to say about them too. I've asked you your feeling about many different historical figures and you have an opinion one way or another and a term for them based on what you know of them. So get the fuck out of here. I'm talking about mistakes I think that were made and how it affects me.

I'm from the south. I've referred to my people closer in culture the same way. We have terms for people from southern black culture who do things that we don't like such as uncle toms, coons. the word nigga gets many different usages, and I don't shudder when I hear it. At this point I'm just talking about humans in the past whom I share a heritage and a fate with. I can lovingly call them whatever I want.


I wanna sympathize with what you're saying in terms of not disrespecting ancestors but we discuss the great things they do all the time. I've called members of my immediate family dummies before, as well as geniuses.


If we're continuing to try and one up each other on Africaness (which happens all the time in here) that's the only reason you can pretend to be more outraged about one thing or another than me.

Having said that, I respect the information you bring here as it pertains to stuff like this. I like the dialogue. If you don't see the respect I have for my ancestors, wherever they may come from based on how much I post great things about them and only wanna flip out when i say something you don't like, you're missing the point. honor Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba. I don't honor the Fuckers who killed them. I'm learning about many more situations like this throughout history in that part if the world and I notice you and a few others have this knowledge and perspective. Share it.

I do have a hard time excepting the notion that these guys seem to have been anti technology and it cost them. That pisses me off more than you and the name calling.
 
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