Mfecane

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Zulu warriors, most of them with typical headdresses, postcard from the 19th century

The term Mfecane (pronunciation in isiZulu : [ mfeˈǀanɛ ]; Sesotho Difaqane or Lifaqane [ difaˈǃˀanɛ ] "crushing, [forced] dispersion") stands for a period of chaos, high mortality and warlike unrest in southern Africa between around 1817 and 1840.

causes

The trigger of the mfecane is unclear. On the one hand, the rise of the Zulu king Shaka led to wars and expulsions, which in turn resulted in further expulsions. On the other hand, there had been a long drought in southern Africa from 1790 to 1820 , which led to hunger and migratory pressure. Third, the ivory trade with the nearby Portuguese colony of Delagoa Bay apparently played a role. The slave trade with the Portuguese is also said to have resulted in conflict.

course

Moshoeshoe I.

The Ndwandwe under Zwide kaLanga , who lived in the northeast of what is now South Africa, attacked the southern Mthethwa Confederation under Dingiswayo in 1817 after they had allied themselves with the Tsonga to secure the trade routes to Delagoa Bay. The Mthethwa were defeated, Dingiswayo killed. Shaka then attacked the Ndwandwe and defeated them. Several groups of the Ndwandwe left their traditional settlement area. Sometimes they used similar war tactics as Shaka and thus created new settlement areas. A group under Soshangane moved to Mozambique and, after the assimilation of the Tsonga, formed the Gaza Empire there, which lasted until 1895. Zwangendaba , a commander of the Ndwandwe army, first fled north with Soshangane and later founded the Ngoni Empire in the area between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi .

Shaka assimilated the subjugated tribes , but usually limited this to women and young men. Old people and men of military age were killed if they could not escape. The Mfecane indirectly led to the formation and consolidation of other groups such as the Matabele , the Mfengu and the Makololo as well as to the formation of states such as today's Lesotho .

The Amangwane, who lived in what is now KwaZulu-Natal , belonged to the Nguni , like most of the ethnic groups involved . They were driven west around 1821, where they displaced the Amahlubi . These in turn oppressed the Batlokoa in 1822 . Under this Sekonyela now attacked the koena tribe under Moshoeshoe I. on. Through skilful diplomacy and tactically well-designed mountain forts, including Thaba Bosiu , Moshoeshoe was able to hold its own against the attackers and thus survive the Mfecane, even if his people were harassed from the west by Griqua , Koranna and finally the Boers . Moshoeshoe integrated weakened ethnic groups, such as the Barolong and parts of the Amahlubi, and thus founded the Basotho people . In 1828 the Amangwane Thaba Bosiu attacked unsuccessfully. Some of them under their leader Matiwane moved to the later Transkei , while other Amangwane were also integrated by the Basotho. On the edge of the Basotho Territory, cannibalism occurred in the course of the Mfecane, to which Moshoeshoe's grandfather Peete fell victim, among others. This was documented by the missionaries living there from 1833. The Amangwane under their leader Matikane moved to the later Transkei. After they had lost the "Battle of Mbolompho" against the troops of the Cape Colony in 1828 , they moved north to what would later become Natal.

Around the center of what is now the Eastern Cape Province , the Mfecane refugees and isiXhosa -speaking groups formed the Mfengu .

The Swazi ethnic group managed to fend off the Zulu onslaught. They founded a kingdom that continues to this day under the name Swaziland . However, the chief Sobhuza I had to hand over two of his daughters to Shaka.

Mzilikazi

The Zulu general Mzilikazi split off from King Shaka and formed a rule in the area of ​​the later South African provinces of the Free State and the Transvaal from around 1826 to 1836 , which is said to have been characterized by great violence. In response to the Great Trek of the Boers , he moved north across the Limpopo to the south of what is now Zimbabwe . There he subjugated the Shona state of the Changamire (Rozwi), later also the Mutapa state , and established the Matabele Kingdom , which lasted until 1888 (submission by Cecil Rhodes ' British South Africa Company ) and 1896 (victory of official British colonial troops). existed.

Cobbing controversy

The British historian Julian Cobbing , then a professor at Rhodes University in South Africa , caused a sensation in 1988 with his investigation of the Mfecane. He saw the Mfecane as a necessary reaction of the population to drought and hunger as well as to the slave trade practiced by the Portuguese and British . He rejected the previous thesis that the Mfecane was primarily a time of violence by blacks against blacks, because it was conceived by defenders of apartheid . The discussion about Cobbing's hypotheses came to be known as the "Cobbing Controversy". Researchers praised the description of the emerging Zulu empire, but also criticized Cobbing for neglecting the role of warring ethnic groups and the ivory trade. The slave trade also only gained importance after the rise of Shaka. The historian John Wright of the former University of Natal agreed with Cobbing on some points. Among other things, he criticized the fact that before Cobbing's publication the Mfecane was not seen in the context of the previous decades, but was presented as a "namable 'fact' in the history of southern Africa".

literature

  • John D. Omer-Cooper: The Zulu aftermath. A nineteenth-century revolution in Bantu Africa. Ibadan history series. Longman, London 1966.
  • Julian Cobbing: The Mfecane as alibi: thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo. In: Journal of African History. 29: 487-519 (1988). Digitized (archive version) ( Memento from February 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  • Norman Etherington: The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815-1854. Longman, 2001, ISBN 0-582-31567-0 .
  • Carolyn Hamilton: The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History. Indiana University Press, 1995, ISBN 1-86814-252-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 188.
  2. ^ A b c Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 4.
  3. ^ A b c Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 189.
  4. ^ Max du Preez: Warriors, lovers and prophets - unusual stories from South Africa's past. Random House Struik, Johannesburg 2009, ISBN 978-1868729012 , p. 59.
  5. ^ History of the Swazi up to about independence (English), accessed on February 21, 2014
  6. ^ Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 190.
  7. ↑ Julian Cobbing: The Mfecane as alibi: thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo. In: Journal of African History. 29: 487-519 (1988). Digitized version ( memento of February 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on February 21, 2014
  8. ^ Carolyn Hamilton: The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History. Indiana University Press, 1995, ISBN 1-86814-252-3 .
  9. ↑ a b Comment ( January 24, 2010 memento in the Internet Archive ) by John Wright, University of Natal , on the Cobbing controversy, accessed December 1, 2015