Zulu: The True Story

Page 2 of 8

• 1. Introduction
• 2. An unnecessary war
• 3. Isandlwana
• 4. The cover-up
• 5. Rorke's Drift
• 6. Chelmsford's recall
• 7. Only one winner
• 8. Find out more
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An unnecessary war

Like so many imperial conflicts of the period, the Zulu War was not initiated from London. Instead, Benjamin Disraeli's government - preoccupied with the Russian threat to Constantinople and Afghanistan - made every effort to avoid a fight. 'We cannot now have a Zulu war, in addition to other greater and too possible troubles', wrote Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the colonial secretary, in November 1878.

The man to whom this letter was addressed - Sir Bartle Frere - had others ideas, however. Frere had been sent out to to Cape Town with the specific task of grouping South Africa's hotch-potch of British colonies, Boer republics and independent black states into a Confederation of South Africa. But he quickly realised that the region could not be unified under British rule until the powerful Zulu kingdom - with its standing army of 40,000 disciplined warriors - had been suppressed.

So he exaggerated the threat posed by the Zulus to the British, and, when the home government refused to sanction war, took matters into his own hands in December 1878 by presenting the Zulu king, Cetshwayo, with an unacceptable ultimatum. This required, among other things, the disbandment of the Zulu Army, and war was the inevitable result.

'Such unilateral action by an imperial pro-consul was not unusual during the Victorian period. '

Such unilateral action by an imperial pro-consul was not unusual during the Victorian period. So great were the distances involved, and so slow the methods of communication, that British governors often took it upon themselves to start wars and annex provinces.

Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, was about to invade Afghanistan without reference to London. But the Zulu conflict was unique in that it was to be the last pre-emptive war launched by the British, prior to the recent campaign in Iraq.

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