Guns, Race, and Skill in Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa.pdf - 2 views
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Guns, Race, and Skill in Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa
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it seems. South Africa's "gun society" originated in the seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company encouraged the European settlers of the Cape of Good Hope to procure firearms and to serve in the
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uring the early
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through the encouragement of traders and missionaries, more Africans took up firearms. They did so for many reasons, most prominently to gain sec
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ill. Relying on colonial descriptions of African peoples of the region, they characterized the Khoisan and Griqua as skilled with weapons, a facility that enabled them to resist colonialism for a while. The Xhosa were both good and bad marksmen, while the Mfengu were skilled and dangerous. The Sotho were "indifferently armed and were poor shots" before the 1870s, when they became "crack marksmen." The Zulu never integrated firearms completely into their military tactics, but by the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 some Zulu shot well because, according to a British government source, they had received instruction from redcoat deserters.4
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africans were labeled according to their efficacy with firearms this is how colonial rulers categorized them by level of threat to skill
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By juxtaposing Gramsci's theory and extensive historical evidence the Comaroffs explored the ways the Tswana debated customs, techniques, and habits that missionaries were promoting. The Comaroffs argue that the Tswana recognized that by accepting British dress, agricultural practices, and literacy they were accepting aspects of colonialist hegemony ranging from racial arrangements to epistemology and ontology. Perceptions of the world and the self, as well as perceptions of power, were bound up in everyday practice just as much as they were related to professing the Christian faith or pledging loyalty to the queen.8
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ys the Tswana debated customs, techniques, and habits that missionaries were promoting. The Comaroffs argue that the Tswana recognized that by accepting British dress, agricultural practices, and literacy they were accepting aspects of colonialist hegemony ranging from racial arrangements to epistemology and ontology. Perceptions of the world and the self, as well as perceptions of power, were bound up in everyday practice just as much as they were related to professing the Christian faith or pledging loyalty to the qu
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earlier part of the nineteenth century, people living in remote areas killed wildlife for food. At the same time, hunting was an important economic activity, as ivory, hides, and ostrich feathers commanded high prices on world markets. Hunting could even provide a better income than cattle farmin
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again at first guns offered a way for people to find food to eat and survive as well as an "income" to be earned by trading certain commodities
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more numerous were the guns and the hunters, the sooner would the game be destroyed or driven out of the coun
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competition would have started and i believe that the white settlers wanted to be the only ones who benefitted from this hunting
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Beginning about the 1860s, skilled labor became so scarce that southern African gunsmiths ceased assembling imported parts and began to import complete guns from Britain
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at some point the white settlers used black labour (slavery) in order to fulfill their demand for guns
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ry, frontiersmen like Africander were hired to hunt and track for European ivory merch
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enro settlers used african labour to source their commodities (in a way this improved africans use and ability with and of guns)
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There were other reasons why old guns retained their appeal in southern Africa longer than they did in other parts of the world. On the nineteenth-century southern African frontier, capital was scarce and game was plentiful; so long as plenty of game could be killed with primitive weapons, there was little incentive to adopt new guns such as the paper-cartridge breechloaders that became available in the 1850s and 1860s.25 Older weapons were a more adaptable and flexible technology than the new rifles, and happened to be less expensive, to
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guns stayed an important piece of trade and value due to the nature of SA, there was much to hunt and kill which also didnt need newer better guns, so the guns in SA stayed "old styled"
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n, Dutch farmers who migrated from the Cape northward in the early nineteenth century, gained a reputation as highly skilled marksm
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noticeable characteristic of the period I allude to (say, twenty years ago), and at the time of the Boer war with us [the First Anglo-Boer War, 1880-81 ] all the middle-aged men, and a good many of the youngsters, were as a rule, and as compared with trained soldiers, very efficient shots." Nicholson added that as late as the 1890s some of the best shots still preferred flintlock muzzle loaders over modern breechloaders
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the Boer had good shooters which were mostly middle aged and young men, i wonder who fought for the africans side and what weapons did they have access to?
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out the Boer marksmen. Of the 24,238 men eligible to be called up for militia service, 9,996 did not own a rifle. Those who did tended to own Martini-Henrys, which were inferior to the British army's new magazine rifles, the Lee-Metford and the Lee-Enfield. The revived Boer reputation for marksmanship during the war of 1899-1902 was due in good part to Kruger's wise decision, shortly before the war, to buy thirty-seven thousand Mauser rifles, which were superior to the British weapons.29
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because of the decrease of animals and africans to hunt less and less Boers had practice or use for guns and so when they were called up it was hard as only a small percentage of them had the necessary marksmanship and skill to shoot
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mong the English-speaking settlers of the Eastern Cape in the 1870s, many of whom worried that they, too, were insufficiently skilled with weapons. Their claims were ideologically charged and closely related to their efforts to dispossess and disenfranchise Africans.
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this article goes in depth in discussing how firearms reached and stayed in South Africa and why they were such a welcomed commodity and how it turned to war and the idea to take firearms away from Africans
