Guns, Race, and Skill in Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa on JSTOR - 2 views
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nkosikhonakhetha on 26 Apr 23There appeared to be plenty of firearms and good shooters in colonial southern Africa. The "gun society" of South Africa began in the seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company pushed European immigrants at the Cape of Good Hope to obtain guns and serve in the military. Despite corporate policies prohibiting the practice, European farmers (dubbed Boers) who crossed colonial borders into Africa's interior supplied firearms to Africans. Such laws remained in effect even after British control was established after the Napoleonic Wars. British liberals overcame conservative resistance and enabled trade and labor become nominally free in the early nineteenth century. Liberals also urged evangelical Christianity to expand among Africans. Approximately halfway through With the help of traders and missionaries, more Africans acquired guns. They did so for a variety of reasons, the most important of which were to gain security and to hunt wildlife. By the middle of the century, as game became scarce, British and Boer colonization had expanded north and east, while conservatives were getting the upper hand.