A war London did not want, launched by one official’s ultimatum
The Anglo-Zulu War lasted barely six months in 1879, yet it shook the British Empire. Started on the initiative of one colonial official against his own government’s wishes, it opened with a crushing Zulu victory at Isandlwana, and the shock helped push Disraeli’s government from office the following year.
The roots lay in a scheme by Lord Carnarvon, the colonial secretary who had overseen Canada’s federation in 1867. He hoped a similar union in southern Africa would put a white minority in charge of a black majority, supplying cheap labour to British plantations and mines. Standing in the way were independent states, above all the South African Republic, or Transvaal, and the Zulu Kingdom. Diamonds found near the Vaal River in 1867 had already drawn British interest inland, and within five years Kimberley had 50,000 residents.
In 1877 Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed the Transvaal for Britain, and Carnarvon sent Sir Bartle Frere as High Commissioner, expecting him to deliver the confederation and become its first governor. Shepstone called Zulu power the root of all native difficulties in the region, while Bishop Colenso attacked the misleading picture being fed to London and defended African communities against colonial injustice. Disraeli’s cabinet, worried about Eastern Europe and India, explicitly did not want a Zulu war.
Frere nonetheless sent King Cetshwayo a provocative ultimatum on 11 December 1878, and when it was refused ordered Lord Chelmsford to invade in January 1879. The Zulu won the opening battle at Isandlwana, after which a small garrison held Rorke’s Drift against a large Zulu force. The British regained the advantage at Kambula and ended the war by capturing the Zulu capital, Ulundi, in early July.
The Zulu Kingdom itself had been forged by Shaka, who by 1825 ruled about 30,000 square kilometres before his assassination in 1828. The 1879 defeats punctured belief in British invincibility and, alongside famines and the unpopular Second Anglo-Afghan War, cost Disraeli power in 1880 after a single term.
Source: Anglo-Zulu War
