The British Empire: Catalyst for the Demise of the Zulu Kingdom

since the Crimean War (1854-1856). In about six hours, the British army lost over 1,300 of the 1,700 men in the battle. 1 The defeat was not at the hands of a rival European power, but of one of the last independent African kingdoms: the Zulu. At this battle, on the slopes of a small mountain in southern Africa called Isandhlwana * (figure 1), Zulu impi (soldiers) left only sixty British and about three hundred African auxiliary survivors.2 According to a report of the battle in the New York Times, in addition to the death of so many of its soldiers, the British lost “…a valuable convoy of 102 wagons, 1,000 oxen, 2 cannon, 400 shot and shell, 1,000 rifles, 250,000 rounds of ammunition, 60,000 pounds weight provisions and the colors of the twenty-fourth regiment.”3 These human and material losses, which marked the beginning of the Anglo-Zulu War that would last until the 4th of July 1879, destroyed Britain’s ability to fight in southern Africa for a full three months. The Battle of Isandhlwana made the Zulu famous across the Western world—they were already well known in the southern third of the African continent—for their fighting ability and determination. Isandhlwana sticks up out of the South African lowveld some ten miles north of the Buffalo River, which formed the border between Zululand and the British colony of Natal (see figure 1 for photo of Isandhlwana). The battle resulted from a British invasion of Zululand and declaration of war. Sir Bartle Freer, British Hig