This book expands the very interesting History of Terror series. There is much to learn about the history of Africa and this book exposes the wars within the Zulu peoples and with the Boers who had moved into the interior to escape British rule. – Very Highly Recommended
NAME: History of Terror, Zulu Terror, The Mfecane Holocaust, 1815-1840 FILE: R2848 AUTHOR: Robin Binckes PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword BINDING: soft back PAGES: 128 PRICE: £12.99 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: Africa, South Africa, Cape Colony, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Dutch colonists, Boers, Zulu, Matabele, internecine warfare, British expansion
ISBN: 1-52672-889-3
IMAGE: B2848.jpg BUYNOW: tinyurl.com/yyrm3bc5 LINKS: DESCRIPTION: This book expands the very interesting History of Terror series. There is much to learn about the history of Africa and this book exposes the wars within the Zulu peoples and with the Boers who had moved into the interior to escape British rule. – Very Highly Recommended The history of Africa is remarkably unknown. Historians have concentrated on parts of the colonial expansion by European powers in the late 19th Century, but very little has been written about Africa before the arrival of the Europeans or the early trading centres and colonies. Britain came relatively late to Africa. The early European colonists were Portuguese and Dutch following on from the earlier Arab colonization and exploitation. The slave trade was built on Arab and African slavers, bt Europeans bought slaves from these slave traders for transportation to the sugar and cotton plantations of the West Indies and America. Britain began its dash for Empire during the Napoleonic Wars and seized Cape Colony from the Dutch. From that point, British interests expanded North and along the West and East Coasts. Encouraged by British colonial power, France, Belgium and Germany decided to enter the race and the African map became covered with a patchwork of colours representing these European Powers, with Britain taking the lion share of territory. In the process, natural tribal groupings were ignored and new colonies became new nations with a broad racial mix and tensions. The result has been that histories and recent journalism has paid scant attention to the first half of the 19th Century and the very rapid process of change. The author has examined the bloody period when the Zulu nation began to fragment and contend with the Boer trekkers who drove into the interior with their wagon trains in their escape from British control around Cape Town. This was a turbulent and devastating period of African history. The Zulu had been the Prussians of Africa and their large and well-drilled armies had defeated generations of opposition from neighbouring tribes. When the Zulu nation divided into two warring camps under King Shaka and the rebel chief Mzililkazi the rebels formed a new tribal grouping, the Matabele, and made Zimbabwe their centre. The Boers became enemy and ally between the two groups and the conflict came to its head in the Battle of Blood River between Dingane's 20,000 strong Zulu Army and the Boer Voortrekkers, establishing the Boer lands and setting the scene for the wars between the Zulus and the British, and the two wars between the Boers and the British that led to the new state of South Africa with its internal divides.