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The Natal Native Contingent in the Anglo-Zulu War. By Paul S. Thompson. Scottsville, South Africa: Privately published, 2003 [1997]. ISBN 0-620-30298-4. Maps. Notes. Bibliographical essay. Pp. v, 179. $70. Can be obtained from the author at [email protected].
Most students of the Anglo-Zulu War will probably not be aware that black Africans made up more than half of the British army that invaded Zululand in January of 1879 and went on to fight the storied battles of Isandlwana, Rorke's Drift, and Ulundi. The British invasion force, under the overall command of Gen. Frederick A. Thesiger, soon to be Lord Ghelmsford, totaled some 16,800 men, at least 9,000 of whom were Africans. Of these, a few, perhaps as many as 1,000, were dissident Zulus, warriors whose leader held a grudge against Zulu paramount chief Getshwayo or who were out to avenge a slight directed their way by men of another Zulu regiment. The bulk of the large African component, however, was comprised of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC), men recruited from Africans resident in Natal, the province of South Africa adjacent to Zululand from which the British invasion was launched.
This is the force whose story Paul Thompson first told in a 1997 edition of the book under review here. He later returned to the subject and in 2003 has produced a revised and expanded version of his book that is sure to remain the definitive account of Britain's black allies in the Anglo-Zulu War for some time to come. Not that Thompson is likely to have much competition. As he points out in the Foreword to the book (p. v), the substantial literature on the Anglo-Zulu War contains very little about the NNC, for reasons that are "partly political, partly cultural." During the imperial era, Europeans were not interested in diminishing their...