The Zulu Nation never stood a chance

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

I was just watching a bit of Shaka Zulu:



It's an epic miniseries about the powerful tyrant Shaka Zulu, the last of the great African kings, and his encounter with the British.

This is more of a "diary entry", which as silly as it sounds is what it really is. lol

Shaka just never stood a chance. Watching the miniseries made me think of the first time many people encountered Europeans. There the Chinese who got their ass kicked in the Boxer Rebellion (although that wasn't the first time they met Europeans). There were the Japanese and Commodore Perry. The Aztecs and the disgraceful way their empire of a million people was defeated by a few hundred Spaniards. The Indians, and I'm not sure exactly how they got beaten by the British.

I guess one could compare the Zulus to the Chinese and Japanese to make a point. The Chinese were far more advanced than the Zulus, they wore clothes number one! They had an actual system of government based upon civil service examinations, based on the teachings of Confucius, his disciples and I'm sure other content. They had cannons, some flintlock muskets, cavalry, crossbows, some light armor, currency, writing, roads, and canals. They also had a larger unified population than the Zulus. Yet they also stood no chance against the Europeans. The Chinese were beset upon by the entirety of the West, as well as the Russian. Nearly every European country, plus the US and Russia invaded China. I don't know if it would have mattered if it was just a few European countries. If the Chinese couldn't stand up to the Europeans, then I guess on those grounds alone the Zulus had no chance.

The miniseries actually starts off after the downfall of the Zulu, when some royal descendant of the Zulu is asking the Queen of Britain for his lands back. The Queen says no and that a unified Zulu nation would be too unruly, so they would have to be broken up. So bearing the previous Chinese example in mind, what the Zulus would want to do is JUST SURVIVE with the nation intact against the British. That is the highest they could achieve. I think the Japanese model is the best one for that. I'm not well-versed in Japanese history, but I believe that what set them apart was their open-mindedness to Western technology. The Chinese were plagued by a pathetic political system that left the fate of the entire nation to the personality of one emperor, much like Rome. The entire empire rose, fell or stagnated due to the personality of one individual, which is something that ruined China, Rome and the Ottoman Empire. So for whatever reason, the Japanese decided to adapt, and the Chinese allowed nearly 100 years to pass without undergoing rigorous reforms and modernization after things started getting violent with the Europeans.

My point is that adaptation and nimbleness was the key to surviving European invasion with your nation intact. I think that with the Zulus lacking so many of the basics of civilization (writing, philosophy, government) they had no chance to adapt.

Maybe they were just too far behind to adapt and subjugation was inevitable.

End of "diary entry" for now. Oh, I hate that term.

Edit: If you don't even have a system of writing, you're a dead man by the 1800's. Your civilization is a dead man walking. You have to have a 19th century mind, if you're going to survive in the 19th century. You have to have the basics in order to just try to compete with the Europeans:

Writing
Currency
Urban centers
Roads

With no writing there is no education. With no education there is no technology. With no currency or roads, there is only bartered trade. With only bartered trade and no urban centers, the economy is weak. With a weak economy, the military too must be weak. With a weak military comes the conquest of the land and the people and the death of the nation.

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

It's interesting. I discovered a new meaning to Shaka Zulu, or to this movie's rendition of him anyway.

On the one hand a lot of black folks will feel proud about the intelligence and power of Shaka. However, the film doesn't make the people who try to kill him that unreasonable. They fear that his coming will lead to him corrupting the Zulu people into bloodthirsty murderers (something which is later borne out under Shaka's reign). So it's not as simple as black vs white, it's also peace vs conquest, the peaceful natural agrarian village vs the tyrannical war machine.

While the prologue of the movie clearly puts Shaka on a pedestal, I am starting to see a fair way to look at Shaka (through this movie) as an Ivan the Terrible figure. The similarities are all there. Ivan lead to a massive expansion of the Russian empire and won great battles, but he later went crazy and killed tons of people in a paranoid reign of terror, including his own son. Shaka does the same thing.

Ivan was a principal founder of Russia as a nation, and so is Shaka for the Zulu nation.

-Edit: Another message of the story: sometimes the foundation of a mighty nation requires terrible things.

[africanhope]

Shaka was blood thirsty. He Mfikane left huge areas of South Africa desolate, with no one living in it, as his Impi killed them all. This allwed the Voortrekkers (Afrikaners, white settlers) to settle in the interior of the country. King Shaka never fought the Europeans, but managed to keep them out of his affairs. It was his half brother Dingane that first fought against white settlers, in his war against the Voortrekkers, which saw most of the Zulu army destroyed at the battle of Bloodriver. After that Zulu power would never be the same again. One of the greatest Zulu kings in my opinion was King Cetshwayo.

AH

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

Shaka was blood thirsty. He Mfikane left huge areas of South Africa desolate, with no one living in it, as his Impi killed them all. This allwed the Voortrekkers (Afrikaners, white settlers) to settle in the interior of the country. King Shaka never fought the Europeans, but managed to keep them out of his affairs. It was his half brother Dingane that first fought against white settlers, in his war against the Voortrekkers, which saw most of the Zulu army destroyed at the battle of Bloodriver. After that Zulu power would never be the same again. One of the greatest Zulu kings in my opinion was King Cetshwayo.

AH

I'm looking at this from a very generalized historical perspective. I've started looking at the conquest of non-European peoples that way. I admit that my thinking on this is a bit akin to the game Civilization. It sounds dumb, but the logic is sound. In the Civilization game you advance your civilization by building roads, doing research into technology, building military units, etc. Now I didn't just get finished playing the game and I'm all hyper about it. Haven't played it in a few years. I'm just saying, there's a certain logic that dictates that the less advanced civilizations never really had a chance against the Europeans (i.e. the Zulus, the Aztecs, the North American Native Americans), while other civilizations such as Japan and China did stand a chance. Japan would have to be the best example. They went from wielding samurai swords to destroying the Russian Navy in 50 years!

My point is no matter how wise a ruler, when your civilization doesn't even have literacy, it may not matter how well you govern. You've got land that people want and you will not be able to produce the weapons you need to defend it.

[africanhope]

First of all, got Civ V and playing it non stop, I love the game. 2nd, I do agree with you about technology etc. no doubt about it. I mean, 300 Voortrekkers managed to virtually paralyse the Zulu empire.

I was merely commenting on your remark that Shaka was tyrant.


Good to see you again btw

AH

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

First of all, got Civ V and playing it non stop, I love the game. 2nd, I do agree with you about technology etc. no doubt about it. I mean, 300 Voortrekkers managed to virtually paralyse the Zulu empire.

I was merely commenting on your remark that Shaka was tyrant.


Good to see you again btw

AH

Did you see the film, Shaka Zulu? I never knew where the movie took place in present-day Africa. It occurred in South Africa? Was Shaka Zulu essentially accurate, with Shaka killing his own people out of vengeance for his torment as a child and for the death of his mother? I know a new Civ came out, would that be Civ V? I played Civ 4 a bit but gave up rather quickly. I beat it on King level and stopped playing it. I chalked my victory up to being situated on a large island to start with, not to skill. lol

Good to see you too.


WEB