The Zulus are a group of South Bantu people, the indigenous people of South Africa, living in some areas of Natal, Swaziland and Mozambique in South Africa. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the Nanbantu people were in a stage of social development when primitive society collapsed, tribal alliances rose, and the country emerged. In 1817, Dingiswayo, the chief of the Southern Bantu tribal alliance, died in battle, and the Zulu Chaka (1787-1828) became the leader. He inherited and developed the Dingiswayo reforms in the military, and established an army of about 100,000 people, using spears and shields as weapons, using tactics such as phalanx and two bread rolls; politically more than 3,000 Approximately 500,000 people in the scattered tribes united, weakening the power of the chiefs of the tribes, and each place was governed by military chiefs.
In this way, Chaka established the Zulu Kingdom, which the British called the Zulu Empire or Zululand. In 1828, Ding Gan (1797-1840) came to power, inherited Chaka's business, restored and developed production, and maintained the unity of the Zulu country. It was under his leadership that the Zulu fought a war against the Boer colonialists.
In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established the first white settlement in South Africa. With the increase of Dutch immigrants, the settlement developed into Cape Town, and then expanded into a Cape Colony with Cape Town as the center. Dutch immigrants plundered the land of the indigenous people, built farms and pastures, drove the blacks to work, and became slave owners themselves. The descendants of Dutch immigrants are called Boers (meaning "farmers"). In 1785 and 1806, the British occupied the Cape Colony twice, and in 1815 it formally took South Africa as its own. The British established their own ruling institutions in the Cape colony, deprived the Boers of their administrative and judicial powers, made English the official language, abolished the Dutch currency and changed it to the British pound, measured land, expropriated rents by land, and abolished slavery. These measures have caused dissatisfaction among the Boers.
The development of contradictions between the British and the Boers led to a migration of the Boers. Beginning in 1836, the Boers drove their carts to find new places to live in the north and northeast. The great migration of the Boers was an escape from British oppression on the one hand, and a predatory expedition against the indigenous people of South Africa on the other. The important goal of the Boer expedition is the Zulu Kingdom, which can capture the land of the indigenous people and occupy the estuary to the Indian Ocean. In 1837, the Boers crossed the Drakensberg Mountains and continuously drove into the Zulu Kingdom, which led to the "Zulu War" in which the Zulu resisted the invasion of the Boer colonialists.
On February 6, 1838, in order to punish the Boers for taking the Zulu land by deception, Dinggan ordered the arrest and execution of more than 70 Boers. Subsequently, the Zulu army searched and attacked the Boers who had lived in western Natal. About 300 Boers were killed.
In March, the British colonists in Port Natal by the sea sent troops to support the Boers. Soon, Ding Gan's younger brother Mpanda led the army to defeat the British reinforcements. At the same time, the two supporting armies of the Boers were also defeated by the Zulus. The Boers suffered the worst loss since the colonial expedition, their strength was reduced by one-tenth, the leadership was split, and the Boers fled.
After winning the first battle against the Boers, Ding Gan did not pursue the victory, but died prematurely, giving the Boers a chance to come back. On November 20, 1838, Pretorius led a reinforcement force consisting of 464 men, 57 ox carts, and 2 artillery pieces from the Cape Colony to assist. On December 15th, this team placed a combat formation on the Nkham Loop-the bullcart formation. Ding Gan hesitated in the face of a powerful enemy, and missed the opportunity of the night attack that the Boers feared the most. This was the fiercest battle of the Zulu War in the 1930s: the Boers relied on the favorable circular bullock cart array and fired with advanced muskets, while the Zulus armed with spears and shields lined up in a dense formation, braving Artillery fire and bullet rain, followed by one after another, charged again and again, showing fearless heroism. In the Battle of Enkham, the Zulu suffered heavy losses, with more than 3,000 casualties. The blood stained the Enkham River red. Now, the rulers of South Africa have set December 16 as a fixed holiday to celebrate the victory of the whites in this battle, while the South African Democratic Forces has designated it as the "Dinggan Day" and regarded it as the heroism of the African people. A symbol of the fight against foreign aggression.
Since then, due to the disparity in power between the two sides, the Zulu people suffered successive failures. In January 1839, the two sides signed a "peace agreement", Ding Gan was forced to cede a large area of land south of the Tuguela River to the Boers, and delivered thousands of livestock and several tons of ivory as war "reparations." However, the Boolean colonists were not satisfied. They colluded and bought Ding Gan's younger brother Mpanda, and promised to help him seize the throne and recognize him as the Zulu king. Mpanda wanted to surrender the queen to the Boers. In January 1840, with the support of 700 Boer warriors, Mpanda led an army of 1,000 to conquer the Dinggan army and defeated Dinggan north of the Mkuzi River. In February, Mpanda became the King of Zulu, ceding a large area of land from the north of the Tugra River to the Heiumfuzi River to the Boer colonists, leaving only the northernmost land of Natal in the Zulu Kingdom. The Boers established the "Republic of Natal" on the occupied Zulu lands. However, the Boers did not last long. In 1843, the Boer Republic was annexed by British colonists.
The Zulu struggle against the Boer colonists—the Zulu War in the 1830s ended in this way.
In the 1850s, the Zulu Kingdom experienced a civil war. Mpanda’s son Ketchiwayo opposed the servile traitorous policy, determined to safeguard the country’s independence and dignity, and won the support and support of the Zulu people. In a battle in October, Kotchiwayo defeated the surrendering faction headed by Umbzilla and took charge of the country. Kotchiwayo (1826-1884) was the outstanding leader of the Zulu people in South Africa in the second half of the 19th century. He spent his youth amid internal and external troubles, witnessed the invasion and expansion of the colonists and the tragic fate of the people of all ethnic groups in Southern Bantu, determined to rebuild the national power and reproduce the glory of the Chaka and Dinggan era.
Kotchiwayo implemented a strict military system, obtained guns and ammunition through various channels, and hired the Englishman John Dan to train the Zulu army and build his own cavalry. Soon, he built a powerful army of 400,000 people, equipped with hundreds of guns, and good at riding and shooting. At this time, it was a period when the British colonists expanded their aggression against South Africa. After occupying the diamond-producing area of Sigliqualand in 1871 and annexing Transvaal in 1877, the British colonists set their next target on the Zulu Kingdom.
In December 1878, the British Supreme Plenipotentiary in South Africa, B. Freer, submitted an ultimatum to Kotchiwayo, demanding that he disband the army, allow the British Governor to enter South Africa and have the authority to supervise the actions of the Zulus. At the same time, six battalions of elite troops were deployed on the border. After being flatly rejected by Ketterchiwayo, the British colonists launched a long-planned war on January 11, 1879.
Lord Chelmsford led a 13,000 British colonial army across the Tugra River and launched a major attack on the Zulu Kingdom. On January 22, the two sides fought fiercely on Mount Isandrwana. Ketterchiwayo took advantage of the dim night to surround the British army, and suddenly launched an attack. The Zulu fighters braved fierce artillery fire to rush to the enemy camp, fought hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and finally won a glorious victory, killing and wounding more than 1,600 British soldiers, wounding more than 3,000 people on their own side, seizing more than 1,000 rifles, 500,000 bullets, and Regained a lot of lost ground.
After the victory, Kotchiwayo dreamed of seeking peace through negotiations, but things went counterproductive. Britain refused any negotiations, increased the army to 20,000, equipped with 36 artillery pieces, and was determined to carry out greater retaliation for its failure. In the battle on June 1, the Zulu defeated the British attack and killed Napoleon III’s son Louis. The battle in Ulundi village on July 4 decided the end of the war. On the open ground, the shooting of 5000 muskets and dozens of artillery made the Zulu army unable to approach the enemy's position, let alone engage in hand-to-hand combat that it was good at. A batch of soldiers fell in a pool of blood, and the Zulu army killed 3000 people on the spot. . At this time, the British army dispatched all cavalry to charge against the Zulu army. The Zulu army suffered a disastrous defeat.
After the defeat of this decisive battle, the Zulu Kingdom fell into disrepair. After the British occupation, it was divided into 13 small emirates "divide and conquer", and finally formally merged into the Natal colony in 1887.
The Zulu people fought bravely for half a century to resist the aggression of the two colonialists, which ended in failure. The root cause of failure is the disparity of power. The Boers are descended from the Netherlands and inherited the fruits of the Dutch bourgeois revolution. Britain also carried out the bourgeois revolution in the mid-17th century, and carried out the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century. The productivity was greatly improved and became the most developed in the world. Capitalist countries. The Zulu people are in the initial stage of the transition from primitive society to the state, with low productivity and extremely backward production methods. Their weapons are spears and shields. Although they have purchased some guns, they are still in the era of cold weapons in general.
It is conceivable that we will fail with backward and primitive production methods to deal with advanced capitalist production methods, primary agriculture and animal husbandry to deal with large industries, and cold weapons to deal with hot weapons. In addition, several generations of Zulu kings have a fluke in the struggle against the colonists. Once the war is won, they will stop the war and give the enemy a respite. When dealing with advanced and dominant enemy forces, the advantages of primitive tribal peoples, such as guerrillas, assaults, ambushes, and night battles, were not brought into play in the Zulu War.
Although the Zulu struggle failed, they dealt a heavy blow to the colonial army.
The British army lost thousands of soldiers, cost 5 million pounds, and caused domestic political turmoil. The Disraeli government of the Conservative Party became the target of public criticism and was forced to give way to the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party headed by Getiston publicly admitted that the war against the Zulu was "one of the most terrifying wars in the history of our country." The Zulu War became a major news in European newspapers at that time, and the Zulu people's fighting spirit won praise from people of insight in various countries. British Conservative Prime Minister Disraeli painfully admitted that the Zulus are "what an amazing nation. It killed a few of our generals and caused some of our bishops to change their beliefs and'end' France." The history of the dynasty". Engels enthusiastically praised the Zulus for doing things that no European army could do. They had no guns, but only used spears and throwing guns. Under the rain of bullets from the British infantry, which was recognized as the world’s number one, built on the basis of a dense formation, "the British army broke up more than once," It even made the British army retreat..."
The Zulu victory in the Battle of Isandrwana was a major military victory in the history of the African people’s struggle against colonialism. It was not until 15 years later that the Ethiopians defeated the Italian army at the Battle of Adua. It was only when the army was defeated that a victory on a larger scale was achieved. The Zulu people’s heroic struggle against the colonists has written a glorious chapter in the modern history of Africa and in the struggle of the people of the world against colonialism.
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