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The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879 : Rise and Fall of the Great Zulu Nation

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The early chapters cover the depredations of Shaka as he forms what had previously been disjointed clans into an effective fighting force, the trials and tribulations of his successors & their clashes with the Voortrekkers, culminating in the Battle of Blood The Dutch settlers that came to be known as Boers were in southern Africa for over two-hundred years before the Zulu war with the British Imperial army and its colonial and native allies. By the time of the Zulu War, these Boers were no longer "colonists" in any meaningful sense of the word -- they were themselves essentially natives. River. There are chapters on the settlement of Natal and subsequent intrigues in the governance of the area and the build up to the intervention of British regular troops leading to the disastrous Battle of Isandlwana where a British army was wiped out to a man followed by the courageous defence at Rorke’s Drift (11 Victoria Crosses were awarded after this action - the most of any single action). Further actions are covered to the Battle of Ulundi & the final defeat of the Zulus & the capture of Cetshwayo, the Zulu king who was still confused as to the reason for the war & British Invasion.

This is a well researched, detailed book which traces the rise of the Zulu nation from its beginnings in the early 19th century with the rise of Shaka to the fateful wars with the British in 1879. The author, the American historian Donald R Morris, was encouraged to write this book by Ernest Hemingway who told Morris that there was no published history of the Anglo-Zulu war. Morris was preparing magazine articles on the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift I am pleased to say, The Washing of the Spears long held reputation as a classic of military history is well earned. Morris was an American naval officer in the 40s and a CIA agent when he wrote this work of immense quality and deep scholarship. Of course, much of the material is dated, but that cannot detract from its accomplishment. To this day, many refer to it as the seminal work on the Anglo-Zulu Wars. No doubt, that is as much a tribute to the quality of the narrative prose as it is to the research.

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The second – and larger – section of The Washing of the Spears concerns the British invasion of Zululand in 1879, and the bloody conflict that followed. Not super widely known, the battles of the Anglo-Zulu War were intense, closely fought affairs, often devolving into face-to-face combat pitting bayonet against spear. Now, I am British but... how the hell did we have an Empire??? I mean, the treatment of the soldiers was appalling, and maybe it is just me but when one problem happened the guy that was sent to fix it just did the same thing as the guy before him, and so on and so forth! It just... makes no sense to me at all. And granted, this might have been part of why I lost interest in the early part of part two of this book - aka the confederation chapter. I found the chapter about Isandhlwana interesting, only because I had never heard of it. Perhaps it is just me, but I kind of feel that rather than spending so much time on the Tudors, Stuarts etcetera in History class maybe it would have made sense to spend some time on more modern events - especially on a battle that is described as being worse than Custers Land Stand in the US (and is according to Wikipedia still the "single greatest defeat for the British Army at the hands of a native army"). It might have just been my curriculum but I am pretty sure we never actually spent any time on the Victorian era. I know we did the early history of the UK, but I honestly don't think we ever covered anything to do with the British Empire unless it related to WW1 and WW2 - the Boer War I know was merely a passing reference as to why we were involved in WW1 in the first place. Now I know this is not the Boer War but surely such events should be more than footnotes in our history?

Beyond the Anglo-Zulu War, and beyond the scope of The Washing of the Spears, things would get far worse before they got even a little better. The Zulu Nation was divided into sub-kingdoms, which fought and squabbled until absorbed into the colony of Natal. Beyond that, apartheid loomed.I don't know why, but I'm fascinated by the Zulus and their encounter with European civilization. The book's beginning and end are really strong, while the in-between plods.

Hours later, at nearby Rorke's Drift, a tiny British garrison of around 140 men was surrounded and assaulted by a Zulu army of 4,000. Somehow, the British force held on and when the sun arose the next day, the Zulu army was gone. The ferocious, close-quarters fighting described is riveting -- one can only imagine the desperation of fighting a battle with no possibility of retreat or surrender. Having said all that, I am clear-eyed enough to note that The Washing of the Spears is flawed. Part of this is due to its age. Published in 1965, it contains anthropological terms that – as even Morris admitted, in an updated forward – are very much outdated. Morris also appears to be operating under certain unexamined assumptions regarding the nature of civilization itself, which manifests in ways both subtle and obvious. Finally, Morris used Afrikaner terms to describe Zulu life, a practice that current author-historians such as Ian Knight take pains to avoid. After all, when describing a culture, you should be attempting to look at the inside out, rather than the outside in. Later, the war took a darkly farcical turn, as the Prince Imperial – only son of Napoleon III, living in exile in England – made his way to South Africa, only to get himself killed. Donald Morris was born in New York City on November 11, 1924, to S. Fred and Vera D. Morris. [1] He attended Horace Mann School until 1942 when he joined the United States Navy. [2] [1] After the war Morris entered the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. [2] [1] He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1948. [1] Morris stated that he was ranked first in his class for naval history, second for English and 409th (out of 410) for electrical engineering. [2] Morris served aboard several destroyers before attending the navy's Intelligence School and learning Russian. [3] He earned two Korean War battle stars and a Navy Commendation Medal. [3] In 1951 he published a novel China Station. [4] Morris lived in Houston, Texas from 1972. He was news analyst and writer on foreign affairs for the Houston Post from 1972 to 1989. [4] [3] In 1989, he founded the Trident Syndicate which published its own foreign affairs periodical, the Donald R. Morris Newsletter, until 2002. [4] [3] Morris was also a commercial pilot and a Certified Flight Instructor for instrument flight.Equally apparent is the incredible odds able to be overcome by even a tiny force when properly arrayed with modern weaponry. Only significant human error permitted Isandlwana. A 20-1 advantage in manpower is readily overcome when breach-loading rifles face spears. Made famous internationally famous by Henry Cele’s towering performance in the 1986 miniseries Shaka Zulu, the founder of the Zulu nation lives up to his billing. Not unlike Napoleon, with whom he was a contemporary, Shaka was a martial genius, who used the force of arms to unite various tribes into a powerful kingdom that ruled southern Africa. Shaka’s unique insights, his complex motivations, his intense relationship with his mother, and his mercurial nature, all combine to make him a dramatist’s dream. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Washing_of_the_Spears_-_Donald_R_Morris.pdf, The_Washing_of_the_Spears_-_Donald_R_Morris.epub At the time Morris was writing, he was also pursuing something relatively novel in the history of colonial wars -- he tried to reconstruct the perspective of the Zulus. Perhaps, that is one of the reasons that an American historian wrote the seminal work on the war. Until Washing of the Spears, the war was understood through the journals of the participants and the long simmering military debate on responsibility for Isandlwana. Morris changed that by trying to give a more complete picture of the motivations of all combatants. Now, I mentioned accuracy... well, there are some elements of this book that I read and I wonder how the hell the author knows that information - now he provides what looks to be an extensive bibliography and comments on sources (got to love the fact that he says the Colenso's work to be rather dense!) and generally this book comes across as being well researched and un-opinionated. That said, any book written well after the period of time it discusses is going to have inaccuracies - but who can say for certain what is accurate and what isn't?

Though skewed both narratively and historically, those movies spurred me to the library to learn more. At the time, however, there were not a lot of books to choose from. In fact, Donald R. Morris’s The Washing of the Spears was the only title available. Shaka passed the month of September in typical fashion. He displayed his smelling-out prowess; summoning some three hundred women he asked each one whether or not she owned a cat, and then killed them all regardless of the answer. Most of them had been married to men in one of the head-ringed regiments then off in the north. He then developed a mild interest in embryology and sliced open a hundred pregnant women to look into the subject While the early battles of the Anglo-Zulu War have been heavily scrutinized, Morris gives his full attention to the lesser known clashes as well, including Hlobane, Eshowe, Intombe, and Kambula. He closes with the sad slaughter at Ulundi, where Gatling guns and Lancers – the new warfare and the old – took their revenge for a calamity they had caused themselves.

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In this opening section, Morris spends time on Zulu life and culture, discussing child rearing, cattle raising, housing structures, religious ceremonies, and military organization. There is a lot of detail, but it is presented fluidly I also found the section on the Imperial Prince to be interesting - I had heard of Eugenie but had no idea who she actually was. There are parts of this that are really good (although it is certainly not up to the same standard as other non-fiction war books I've read such as 'Nam' or 'We Were Soldiers Once and Young') but I don't think there were enough really interesting bits to make up for the fact that the main part of this (the section after Shaka but before the battles of Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift in particular as that caused the four month hiatus) that are just far too dense.

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