Anglo-Zulu War

The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa. It opened with one of the worst defeats ever suffered by a British army against an African force, at Isandlwana in January, but ended in July with the destruction of the Zulu capital at Ulundi and the break-up of the kingdom.

The Zulu state had been built into a powerful military kingdom in the 1810s and 1820s by Shaka, whose regiments of young men, the amabutho, dominated the region. By the 1870s it was ruled by King Cetshwayo, Shaka's nephew. Its neighbours were the British colony of Natal to the south, and to the north-west the Boer republic of the Transvaal, which Britain annexed in 1877. Cetshwayo had a long-running border dispute with the Transvaal Boers.

The British colonial secretary Lord Carnarvon hoped to unite the British colonies, Boer republics and African states of southern Africa into a single confederation under British control, as had been done in Canada. His High Commissioner, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, regarded the independent and well-armed Zulu Kingdom as an obstacle to this plan and a threat to the colonies.

A boundary commission reported in 1878 largely in the Zulu's favour, but Frere used a series of border incidents to justify war. On 11 December 1878 his representatives presented Zulu envoys with an ultimatum demanding, among other things, that Cetshwayo disband his army and accept a British resident. The terms could not realistically be met within the 20 to 30 days allowed. Frere acted largely on his own initiative, and the government in London learned the full terms only when it was too late to stop him.

British and colonial forces under Lord Chelmsford invaded Zululand in three columns in January 1879. On 22 January, while Chelmsford was away with part of the central column, a Zulu army of about 20,000 men attacked the camp he had left at Isandlwana. The camp had not been fortified, and the defenders were overwhelmed; over 1,300 soldiers and auxiliaries on the British side were killed, while Zulu losses were also heavy. That afternoon and night a Zulu reserve force of some 4,000 attacked the small mission station at Rorke's Drift on the Natal border, held by around 150 men, but was beaten off after hours of fighting. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded for its defence.

After Isandlwana, the British coastal column was besieged at Eshowe, and the invasion stalled while reinforcements were sent from Britain. In late March, British forces were defeated at Hlobane but on the following day repelled a major Zulu attack at Kambula, and in early April Chelmsford won at Gingindlovu and relieved Eshowe. A second, larger invasion advanced on the royal kraal. On 1 June the exiled French Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III, was killed while serving with a British patrol. On 4 July 1879 Chelmsford's army, formed in a hollow square, defeated the Zulu at Ulundi and burned the capital.

Cetshwayo was captured in August and sent into exile. Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had replaced Chelmsford, divided Zululand into thirteen chiefdoms under appointed chiefs, a settlement that soon led to civil war. Cetshwayo was allowed to return in 1883 but was driven out by rivals and died in 1884. Britain annexed Zululand in 1887 and attached it to Natal ten years later. The war's cost and early disasters damaged Disraeli's government, which lost the 1880 election, and it became part of the wider European Scramble for Africa.

Our 1878 and 1880 maps show Zululand alongside Natal, the Cape Colony and the Boer republics on the eve of and just after the war.