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to unpack the Zulus’ own perception of their heroic military culture, it is argued that, because of the engrained Zulu cultural consensus that only hand-to-hand combat was appropriate conduct for a true fi ghting-man, killing at a distance with a fi rearm was of inferior signifi cance, and did not even entail the ritual pollution that followed homicide and the shedding of human blood. Only close combat was worthy of praise and commemoration.

So, if we are to attempt to grasp what Zulu military culture entailed, and the tentative part fi rearms played in it, we must approach the matter as best we can from the Zulu perspective

As such, the traders owed him military service, and it quickly came to Shaka’s attention that they possessed muskets.

In part, the Zulu reluctance to take up fi rearms lay in the initial diffi culty in obtaining them

During the 1830s, guns began to be traded into Zululand in greater numbers, much to the despair of the missionary Captain Allen Gardiner. He saw in this incipient trade a Zulu threat to all their neighbours, and was much disheartened, in 1835, when the Zulu elite evinced no interest in the word of God, but only in his instruction in the best use of the onomatopoeic ‘issibum’, or musket. 21

young Pedi men (in what became a recognized rite of manhood) regularly made their way to the labour markets of Natal and the Cape and bought fi rearms from guntraders with their earning

As we have seen, the Zulu adoption of fi rearms was partial and imperfect, hedged about by all sorts of hindrances, both practical and essentially cultural. Only a handful of men who had close contact with white hunters and traders were eas

with fi rearms, and knew how to use them

Shaka, as Makuza indicated, was very much taken up with muskets and their military potential.

Spear and shield had again won the day, reinforcing the traditionalist Zulu military ethos, and wiping away memories of the disastrous war against the Voortrekkers.

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 fr

1. In a percussion lock, a percussion cap containing fulminate is placed over a nipple on top of the touchhole; the hammer strikes the cap, which explodes and ignites the charge in the barrel. This is a much more reliable ignition system, especially in damp weather, and it allows a weapon to be more quickly loaded, takes less skill, and entails fewer risks than the flintlock. By the 1850s most armies had switched to the percussion loc

The relationship of hunting skills and marksmanship to the political, economic, and ecological transformation of southern Africa can only be understood fully when we consider the ways in which guns were adapted to the local environme

Admittedly, the final estimates for the Saharan slave trade are very poor. This is also true for the Red Sea slave trade. However, it will be shown that all of the statistical results are completely robust with or without the estimates of slaves shipped during these two slave trades. That is, the statistical findings remain even if the Red Sea and Saharan slave trades are completely ignored because of the poor quality of their data. Combining the ethnicity data with the shipping data, estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in Africa are constructed. 26 The construction procedure follows the following logic. Using the shipping data, the number of slaves shipped from each coastal country in Africa is first calculated. As mentioned, the problem with these numbers is that slaves shipped from the ports of a coastal country may not have come from that country, but from inland countries that lie landlocked behind the coastal country. To estimate the number of slaves shipped from the coast that would have come from these inland countries, the sample of slaves from the ethnicity data is used. Each ethnicity is first mapped to modern country boundaries. This step relies on a great amount of past research by African historians. The authors of the secondary sources, from which the data were taken, generally also provide a detailed analysis of the meaning and locations of the ethnicities appearing in the historical records. In many of the publications, the authors created maps showing the locations of the ethnic groups recorded in the documents. For example, detailed maps are provided in Higman’s samples from the British Caribbean, Koelle’s linguistic inventory of free slaves in Sierra Leone, Mary Karasch’s samples from Rio de Janeiro, Aguirre Beltran’s sample from plantation and sales records from Mexico, Adam Jones’ sample of liberated child slaves from Sierra Leone, and David Pavy’s sample of slaves from Colombia. 27 Other sources also provide excellent summaries of the most common ethnic designations used during the slave trades. These include Philip Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, ethnographer George Peter Murdock’s Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History, and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s

Admittedly, the final estimates for the Saharan slave trade are very poor. This is also true for the Red Sea slave trade. However, it will be shown that all of the statistical results are completely robust with or without the estimates of slaves shipped during these two slave trades. That is, the statistical findings remain even if the Red Sea and Saharan slave trades are completely ignored because of the poor quality of their data. Combining the ethnicity data with the shipping data, estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in Africa are constructed.The construction procedure follows the following logic. Using the shipping data, the number of slaves shipped from each coastal country in Africa is first calculated. As mentioned, the problem with these numbers is that slaves shipped from the ports of a coastal country may not have come from that country, but from inland countries that lie landlocked behind the coastal country. To estimate the number of slaves shipped from the coast that would have come from these inland countries, the sample of slaves from the ethnicity data is used. Each ethnicity is first mapped to modern country boundaries. This step relies on a great amount of past research by African historians. The authors of the secondary sources, from which the data were taken, generally also provide a detailed analysis of the meaning and locations of the ethnicities appearing in the historical records. In many of the publications, the authors created maps showing the locations of the ethnic groups recorded in the documents. For example, detailed maps are provided in Higman’s samples from the British Caribbean, Koelle’s linguistic inventory of free slaves in Sierra Leone, Mary Karasch’s samples from Rio de Janeiro, Aguirre Beltran’s sample from plantation and sales records from Mexico, Adam Jones’ sample of liberated child slaves from Sierra Leone, and David Pavy’s sample of slaves from Colombia.Other sources also provide excellent summaries of the most common ethnic designations used during the slave trades. These include Philip Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, ethnographer George Peter Murdock’s Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History, and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Many of the ethnic groups in the ethnicity sample do not map cleanly into one country. The quantitatively most important ethnic groups that fall into this category include: the Ana, Ewe, Fon, Kabre, and Popo, who occupied land in modern Benin and Togo; the Kongo, who resided in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola; the Makonde, localized within Mozambique and Tanzania; the Malinke, who occupied lived within Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Guinea Bissau; the Nalu, from Guinea Bissau and Guinea; the Teke, living in land within Gabon, Congo, and Democratic Republic of Congo; and the Yao from Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. In cases such as these, the total number of slaves from each ethnic group was divided between the countries using information from George Peter Murdock’s Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History. Ethnic groups were first mapped to his classification of over 800 ethnic groups for Africa. Using a digitized version of a map provided in his book and GIS software, the proportion of land area in each country occupied by the ethnic group was calculated. These proportions were then used as weights to disaggregate the total number of slaves of an ethnicity between the countries. Using the ethnicity sample, an estimate of the number of slaves shipped from each coastal country that would have come from each inland country is calculated. Using these figures, the number of slaves that came from all countries in Africa, both coastal and inland, is then calculated. Because over time, slaves were increasingly being taken from further inland, the estimation procedure is performed separately for each of the following four time periods: 14001599, 1600-1699, 1700-1799, 1800-1900. In other words, for each time period, the shipping data and ethnicity data from that time period only is used in the calculations. In the end, the procedure yields estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in each of the four slave trades for each of the four time periods listed above.

1661–63 the British Royal African Company alone shipped 4,038 firearms to the West African c

supplied closed to 100,000 firearms and other small arms to the West African coastal region. 12

due to the falling prices on firearms in relation to the prices on slaves, African firearms imports increased very sharply in the 18th century.

Scholars have debated what kind of impact, or to what extent, firearms imports affected Africa during the slave trade centuries. The demographic impact of the slave trade was undisputedly substantial, even though determining the exact scope has been subjected to great debates. 22 In 1750, Africa had 6–11 per cent of the world’s population. By 1900 it had fallen to 5–7 per cent. 23 Besides the large demographic impact, the trade for slaves had a more socially disruptive impact than the trade for the same value of commodities, as slaves were more likely to be acquired by force or theft

Firearms became a symbol of wealth and prestige in the Songye village society. 47

amakhanda,

adets

mercenaries

For example, the Maasai, who were important intermediaries in the ivory trade, did not hunt elephants themselves but gained access to ivory through groups of Dorobo and Okiek, sometimes using ties such as marriage and sometimes forcing these hunters to turn over both elephant ivory and hippopotamus teeth for minimal compensation (Wright, 1985, p. 546; Kasfir, 1992, p. 322-3).

This allowed for substantial accu- mulation on the part of intermediaries in the trade; it also allowed these inter- mediaries to continue to profit even as their operating costs grew with the increased distance of the ivory frontier from the coast (Sheriff, 1986 and 1987).

In spite of the rhetoric of peace and order, the destruction at the leading edge of Swahili expansion in the Eastern Congo - which involved raids on villages, removal of people and property, confiscation or destruction of food crops, and the spread of small pox - was only slowly followed by the estab- lishment of a new order.