15.Stephen Taylor, 'Zulu History Rewritten and Rerun', The Times Higher Education Supplement, 1 Nov. 1991.
16.Cited in Taylor, 'Zulu History Rewritten and Rerun'.
17.The term 'precolonial' remains an unsatisfactory label for a period which ends with the establishment of a colonial presence in southern Africa (the date of which varies from region to region, ranging from the establishment of the Cape colony in the late 1600s to the destruction of the Zulu kingdom after 1879, the latter being not strictly the establishment of a colony). The beginning point of this period is even less precise, varying in common – but seldom explicit – usage anywhere between 1400 and 1750, again with regional variation. The term is not only imprecise, it is also intrinsically colonially-centered in terms of the perspective which it induces. Alternatives are not readily available. Terms such as 'pre-industrial or 'precapitalist' suffer similar problems. As research in the period conventionally designated 'precolonial' develops, regional and temporal disaggregation and specification will, hopefully, reduce the need for such a catch-all label.
18.J. Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, London, 1965.
19.Papers listed on the programme: W. Beinart, 'Labour and Technology: Penetration into Pondoland, 1830–1930' ; P. Bonner, 'The Swazi Kingdom' ; W. G. Clarence-Smith, 'Capitalist Penetration among the Nyaneka of Southern Angola, 1840–1918'; P. Delius, 'The Structure of the Pedi State' ; A. Erwin, 'The Concept of the Mode of Production'; M. Evers and M. Taylor, 'The Archaeologist and the Investigation of the Economic Base'; J.J. Guy, 'Production and Exchange in the Zulu Kingdom'; M. Hall, 'Dendroclimatology, Rainfall and Human Adaptation in the Later Iron Age of Natal and Zululand'; J. Keenan, 'On the Concept of the Mode of Production in Precapitalist Social Formations: (An Anthropological View)'; J. Kimble, 'The Economic History of Lesotho in the Nineteenth Century'; N. Parsons, 'The Economic History of Khama's Country in Southern Africa'; J. Peires, 'Economic History of the Xhosa up to 1835'; I. Phimister, 'Pre-colonial Goldmining in Southern Zambesia: A Reassessment' ; with summing up and discussion led by Shula Marks. (Details taken from the organisers ' letter dated 13 June 1976.) A different programme (undated, but probably subsequent as I have never seen any of the following papers) does not mention papers by Evers and Taylor, Phimister, and Delius. I am grateful to Philip Bonner for giving me access to his set of conference papers, correspondence, and notes.
20.B. Hindess and P.Q. Hirst, Pre-capitalist Modes of Production, London, 1975.
21.G. Liesegang, 'Beitrage zur Geschichte des Reiches der Gaza Nguni im Sudlichen Mocambique, 1820–1895', Ph.D. thesis, Köln, 1967; M. Legassick, 'The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780–1840', Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1969; A. Smith, 'The Struggle for Control of Southern Mocambique, 1720–1835', Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1970; R. Mael, 'The Problems of Political Integration in the Zulu Empire', Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1974; H. Slater, 'Transitions in the Political Economy of South-East Africa', D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, Brighton, 1976; J. Cobbing, 'The Ndebele under the Khumalos, 1820–1896', Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1976; P. Bonner, 'The Rise, Consolidation and Disintegration of Dhlamini Power in Swaziland between 1820–1899', Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1977; D. Hedges, 'Trade and Politics in Southern Mozambique and Zululand in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries', Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1978; W. Beinart, 'Production, Labour Migrancy and the Chieftaincy: Aspects of the Political Economy of Pondoland, 1860–1930', Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1979; P. Delius, 'The Pedi Polity under Sekwati and Sekhukhune, 1828–1880', Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1980.
22.M. Hall and J. Wright, eds., Production and Reproduction in the Zulu Kingdom, workshop papers, Pietermaritzburg, 1977, Introduction, 1.
23.J.B. Peires, ed., Before and After Shaka: Papers in Nguni History, Grahamstown, 1981.
24.S. Marks and A. Atmore, eds., Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa, London, 1980. The publication in 1982 of A History of South Africa to 1870, edited by M. Wilson and L. Thompson was a reprint of The Oxford History of Southern Africa of 1969 (minus chapter one on the archaeological background by Ray Inskeep).
25.Among others, papers were given by M. Hall, W.D. Hammond-Tooke and T. Evers, C. Hamilton, H. Webster, J. Wright, M. Kinsman, P. Harries, and A. Mazel.
26.J.B. Wright, 'Politics, Ideology and the Invention of the Nguni', in T. Lodge, ed., Resistance and Ideology in Settler Societies, 4, Johannesburg, 1986, 96–118; C. Hamilton, 'Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom', M.A. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1986; J. Wright and C. Hamilton, 'Traditions and Transformations: The Phongolo-Mzimkhulu Region in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries', in A. Duminy and B. Guest, eds., Natal and Zululand From Earliest Times to 1910: A New History, Pietermaritzburg, 1989; also see J. B. Wright, 'A.T. Bryant and the "Wars of Shaka'", History in Africa, 18 (1991), 409–25, first presented as a seminar paper in 1988; J.B. Wright, 'The Dynamics of Power and Conflict in the Thukela-Mzimkhulu Region in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Critical Reconstruction', Ph.D. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1990.
27.See for example Bra Mzala in Natal Mercury, 11 Apr. 1991 and Piet 'Skiet' Rudolph quoted in Weekly Mail, 10–16 May, 1991; see also speech by G. Buthelezi, Ulundi, 20 Aug. 1983.
28.My discusssion of the nature of historical debate draws heavily on D. W. Cohen, The Combing of History, Chicago, 1994. Significantly, Cohen uses the example of the debates around the mfecane to stress the temporality and temporicity of historiographical debate. He notes that the mfecane debates are also arguments about the 'fate of implicit social theory concerning the role of ethnicity in the formation of African communities; the value of core and periphery models in the historicization of early capitalism in southern Africa; and the relationship between past, as constituted in historical texts, and the present' (p. 74). Cohen suggests that the mfecane debates, amongst others, are beginning to prompt historiographers to pay greater attention to the ethnography and economy of any particular historical debate.
PART ONE
Historiography and Methodology
Putting the Mfecane Controversy into Historiographical Context
NORMAN ETHERINGTON
Julian Cobbing presents not one, but three arguments in his challenge to accepted versions of the mfecane:
Troubled times in southern Africa were not a consequence of the rise of the Zulu kingdom;
A continuous series of writers seeking to justify white settlement blamed the Zulu for devastating and depopulating vast territories;
The root causes of commotions in the first few decades of the nineteenth century were labour raiding and slaving expeditions mounted to feed demand generated in the Cape colony and Portuguese Mozambique.
The first argument has been widely accepted. The other two have provoked spirited controversy. Essays in Part One of this book take up some of the issues raised by the second and third of Cobbing's propositions.
Settler History and the Mfecane
Cobbing regards the mfecane as the masterpiece of settler history, and in so doing aligns himself with a long-standing tendency of South African scholarship to emphasise the political uses of history. Afrikaner nationalists have at various times advertised their intention to find a past that serves their cause. English-speaking historians such as the influential amateurs George McCall Theal and George