“Treacherous Savages & Merciless Barbarians: Knowledge, Discourse, and Violence during the Cape...

Treacherous Savages & Merciless Barbarians: Knowledge, Discourse and Violence during

the Cape Frontier Wars, 1834 -1853I

Jochen S. Arndt

Between 1834 and 1853 the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony of South Africa was a site of intensive social interaction between European settlers,

missionaries, and soldiers, on the one hand, and the indigenous Xhosa1, on the

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AbstractBetween 1834 and 1853 the British colonial army fought three wars with the Xhosa peoples who resided on the eastern frontier of the Cape Col-ony of South Africa. Based on the published and unpublished diaries, journals, correspondence, and memoirs of British soldiers who served in these wars, this paper examines how these wartime experiences led to the creation of a military knowledge system of the Xhosa that stereo-typed them as treacherous savages and merciless barbarians. Further, this essay argues that these stereotypes played a crucial role in the conquest of the Xhosa by justifying policies of dispossession and sub-jugation in the name of colonial security, and allowing British soldiers to conduct unlimited warfare against them. In this regard, the British military knowledge system of the Xhosa casts long shadows of violence and distrust over the history of South Africa.

1. For more information on the Xhosa, see especially J. B. Peires, House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of their Independence (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

Jochen S. Arndt completed a B.A. in International Marketing in 1995. Between 1996 and 2003 he lived and worked in Germany and Portugal. In 2007, he graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University with an M.A. in history. He is currently a second-year Ph.D. student in African and World history at the University of Illinois Chicago. Previously, he authored an article on the First Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War which was published in The Journal of Mississippi History in the spring of 2007. He thanks Dr. James Searing and the anonymous readers for their helpful comments.

The Journal of Military History 74 ( July 2010): 709-735.Copyright © 2010 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or trans-mitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC.

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other. It was also a time and a place where Europeans created knowledge systems of Africans in general, and the Xhosa in particular. These knowledge systems were articulated through various forms of discourse and served, in combination with British metropolitan interests and ideologies, as the basis for colonial policies vis-à-vis South Africa’s black peoples. To date, most studies have focused on the forms of knowledge and discourse produced by European settlers and missionaries and their role in the subjugation of the various Xhosa polities over the course of the nineteenth century. For example, in his book White Supremacy and Black Resistance (1992), Clifton C. Crais noted that while the settler discourse on the Xhosa had been inclusive in 1820, two decades later it had stereotyped them as the inferior “Other,” opening the way for policies of dispossession and subjugation.2 More recently, Andrew Bank and Richard Price argued that the two frontier wars between 1834 and 1846 provoked a hardening of missionary attitudes toward the Xhosa polities.3

With all this focus on settlers and missionaries, historians have paid comparatively little attention to the British colonial army and its part in creating a (military) knowledge system of the Xhosa with equally powerful effects.4 Given that the British colonial army played a key role in the conquest of the Xhosa polities over the course of the three frontier wars between 1834 and 1853, the forms of knowledge that emerged out of these military encounters deserve more attention. In fact, this essay argues that these violent encounters fostered a military knowledge system of the Xhosa that stereotyped them as treacherous savages and merciless barbarians, and that these characterizations allowed British soldiers to


2. Clifton Crais, White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-Industrial South Africa: The Making of the Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 125-46.

3. Richard Price, Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 127-147; and An-drew Bank, “Losing Faith in the Civilizing Mission: The Premature Decline of Humanitarian Liberalism at the Cape, 1840-1860,” Empire and the Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850, eds. Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Penn-sylvania Press, 1999), 366, 369.

4.This neglect seems to match a wider trend in the history of colonialism. In 1995 Douglas M. Peers noted in the context of British India that “The crucial role played by the army and its central position in the make-up of the evolving colonial state have been downplayed….” He subsequently added that the army’s “important contributions to the collection, analysis and dissemination of knowledge” are often overlooked in the historical literature. See Douglas M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth-Century India (New York: Tauris, 1995), 7, 12. For some rare exceptions, see Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (New York: Manchester University Press, 2004) and James Belich, The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict: The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986). For a comparative example, see Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (New York: Tauris, 1999 [1995]), especially pages 28-30.

British Stereotyping in the Cape Frontier Wars

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justify post-war policies of dispossession toward and unlimited warfare against the Western Xhosa polities during this period.

These conclusions confirm the pessimistic interpretation of colonial knowledge systems first promoted by Edward W. Said and others.5 Said suggests that knowledge of the colonial “Other” was influenced by European conceptual biases that justified conquest and domination. While this essay supports such a cautionary interpretation of colonial knowledge, it seeks to demonstrate how cross-cultural violence directly contributed to these biases. Thus, while categories such as “savages” and “barbarians” existed at least since the colonization of Ireland and North America6, this paper contends that for British soldiers the violent encounters with the Xhosa added new (negative) meaning to these preexisting categories. In fact, in response to the peculiar aspects of the Xhosa way of war, British soldiers refined these generic labels, turning “savages” into “treacherous savages” and “barbarians” into “merciless barbarians.”

This connection between knowledge and violence is often downplayed by historians. For instance, Clifton Crais contends that “the growth of negative appraisals [of the Xhosa] initially centered on two issues which the British-settler elite gradually joined together: violations of private property (‘thievishness’) and the unwillingness of Africans to labour for whites (‘indolence’).”7 According to his interpretation, the “continued shortage of workers and rising black resistance” were the key driving forces behind the elaborate denunciations of the Xhosa.8 While Crais is certainly correct that European settlers desired the land and labor-power of the Xhosa, he fails to appreciate the transformative influence that frontier warfare had on knowledge of and discourse about the colonial “Other.” This paper argues that the changing nature of frontier warfare between 1834 and 1853 pushed British knowledge and discourse about the Xhosa to a new level. Whereas settler greed produced stereotypes that focused on the alleged indolence, thievishness, and dishonesty of the Xhosa, the peculiar nature of frontier warfare led to their portrayal as treacherous savages and merciless barbarians in need of chastisement, conquest, and, as some commentators argued, extermination.

This relationship between military knowledge and discourse and colonial violence was not unique to British South Africa. For example, Linda Colley explained that the characterization of Native Americans as “barbarians, predators and monsters” placed the latter outside humanity and civilization, enabling British soldiers to kill indigenous women and children indiscriminately.9 However, Colley also emphasized that not all British soldiers were “invariably antipathetic to Indians.”10 Instead, some viewed them as victims and thereby complicated


5. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 6. Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (New York: Cambridge, 1998), 2. 7. Crais, White Supremacy, 129.8. Crais, White Supremacy, 139.9. Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850 (New York: Anchor

Books, 2004), 185.10. Colley, Captives, 186.

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11. Colley, Captives, 186-188. Peter Way came to a similar conclusion when he noted that the “[British] military shifted from one stereotype of Native Americans to another as need dic-tated, the ‘Indian’ being made to play the savage, the cunning and treacherous ally, greedy homo economicus, the drunkard, and the highly skilled woodsman, all with an eye to squeeze the most benefit possible out of natives.” And for South Asia, C. A. Bayly concluded that once the need for indigenous manpower became a paramount concern for the British military establishment, it conveniently replaced the stereotype of the “barbarous Gurkha” with the “imperial myth” of the Gurkhas as a martial race. See Peter Way, “The Cutting Edge of Culture: British Soldiers Encounter Native Americans in the French and Indian War,” Empire and the Others, 125; and C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 113.

12. Peires, House of Phalo, 15-20; Crais, White Supremacy, 24-25, 28.

the perceptions of Native Americans on both sides of the Atlantic.11 Similar contradictions affected the British military knowledge of the Xhosa. For example, rather than characterizing them as the embodiment of evil, some soldiers, disgusted with the excesses of imperial warfare, adopted a humanitarian perspective and saw the Xhosa as victims of misguided colonial policies. Other evidence of alternative views of the Xhosa can be seen from soldiers who were impressed by their martial abilities and viewed them as a martial race. However, neither of these alternative views challenged the characterization of the Xhosa as treacherous savages and merciless barbarians in the long run. Because these two stereotypes had significant influence on British wartime and postwar policies toward the Xhosa, the processes through which they were created deserve more attention.

The Three Frontier Wars, 1834-1853Due to migration and expansion, the Xhosa had evolved into the dominant

power in the Eastern Cape region by the time of the first warlike clash with European soldiers in 1779. Although the various Xhosa chiefs in western Xhosaland (west of the Kei River) nominally recognized a paramount chief who resided in eastern Xhosaland (east of the Kei River), political power was fragmented. In times of war, the power and actions of a chief depended primarily on the support of his councilors and people, his ability to form alliances with other chiefs, and his skill in channeling the influence of religious prophets, such as Nxele, Ntsikana, and Mlanjeni, rather than on the authority of the paramount chief. Moreover, because cattle were central to reproduction in Xhosa society, any form of power and social life was closely tied to the possession and defense of cattle, pasture land, and water. Not surprisingly, when these sinews of political and social organization were threatened by European colonial expansion, Xhosa society came under enormous stress. In this explosive atmosphere misunderstandings and overreactions on either side often led to war.12

Although the Cape Colony and the Xhosa polities fought nine wars against each other between 1779 and 1879, the most intense phase of conflict occurred between 1834 and 1853. During this nineteen-year period the British colonial army and the Xhosa polities fought three successive and increasingly intense wars



13. The most important insights into these wars can be gained from Jeffrey B. Peires, House of Phalo, especially chapter nine, and his The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7 ( Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1989), especially chapter one. Useful monographs of the wars are John Milton, The Edges of War: A History of the Frontier Wars, 1702-1878 (Cape Town: Juta & Co., 1983) and Noël Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).

against each other.13 The first conflict, known as the Sixth Frontier War, occurred between December 1834 and September 1835. In this war, it took the coalition of British soldiers and auxiliaries nine months to defeat an alliance of various Xhosa chiefs. During the subsequent Seventh Frontier War, the colonial forces and allies needed more than twenty months of campaigning to force the Xhosa to surrender in December 1847. Finally, the Eighth Frontier War began in December 1850 and ended in March 1853 after twenty-seven months of arduous campaigning, guerrilla

Eastern Frontier of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. [Redrawn from a map included in The Autobiography of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Smith, Baronet of Aliwal on the Sutlej, G. C. B.. Copyright © London, John Murray, 1903. Reproduced under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.]

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14. For the numerical strength of the British Army at the Cape, see Charles Lennox Stretch, The Journal of Charles Lennox Stretch, ed. Basil A. le Cordeur (Cape Town: Maskew Miller Long-man, 1988), 162, editor’s note 21; Milton, The Edges of War, 165, 178; British Parliamentary Pa-pers, Colonies, South Africa, Vol. 9, B. Hawes, Colonial Office, to House of Commons, August 6, 1851, 26-27. The regular forces were never enough to fight an effective campaign against the Xhosa and had to be reinforced with indigenous Khoikhoi and Mfengu (Fingo) levies, as well as Burgher (Boer) commandos. See J. J. Hulme, “Notes on the Burgher Commandos in the 7th Kaffir War, 1846-1847,” Military History Journal, 2, no. 1 ( June 1971).

15. For casualty returns, see The Times, 2 November 1836; The Times, 7 March 1853; Peires, The Dead Will Arise, 28.

16. See Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies for background on these officers. 17. William Cox, Peace and War on the Frontier, 1828-1835: The Journal of Major William

Cox, ed. P. H. Butterfield (Port Elizabeth: Historical Society of Port Elizabeth, 1982), 4.18. For a similar case, although three decades earlier, see John Shipp, Memoirs of the Ex-

traordinary Military Career of John Shipp, Late a Lieut. In His Majesty’s 87th Regiment (New York: Macmillan, 1890), 18, 21, 31, 32.

19. W. J. Adams, and Alfred Gordon-Brown (ed.), The Narrative of Private Buck Adams, 7th (Princess Royal’s) Dragoon Guards, on the Eastern Frontier of the Cape of Good Hope, 1843-1848 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1941), 2.

and counter-guerrilla warfare in the bush of the Fish River, the Amatola Mountains, and the open field of the trans-Kei region. The wars not only became longer but also came to absorb more men and produce more casualties over time. For instance, while the British Army deployed only 1 800 regular troops in the Sixth frontier war, it had almost 8 000 men in the field at the end of the Eighth Frontier War.14 Over the same time period, British casualties increased from 100 to 1 400, while the number of Xhosa casualties quadrupled from 4 000 to 16 000.15 By 1853 the death and devastation that accompanied these wars had ruined the Xhosa polities residing west of the Kei River and forced them to surrender to the British colonial army.

Knowing the Xhosa in Times of WarThe top military positions in the Cape Colony, such as governor, commander-

in-chief, and commander of troops on campaign, were usually filled with highly educated and experienced professional soldiers. Men like Sir Benjamin D’Urban, Sir Harry Smith, and Sir George Cathcart had seen action in the Peninsular War, in India, and the Americas before they filled the top ranks in the Cape Colony’s military hierarchy.16 The middle to lower-ranking soldiers represented a variety of experiences in this regard. For example, the Irish-born Major William Cox, who led one of the divisions during the Sixth Frontier War, had seen service in the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of New Orleans. He came to South Africa in 1823 and spent seven years on the eastern frontier.17 Privates often ended up in the Cape Colony under peculiar circumstances. William J. Adams is not an unusual case.18 The unemployed Adams was roving the streets of London when an army recruiter enticed him to join troops bound for the Cape of Good Hope. The recruiter promised him that the Cape was just like “The Garden of Eden.”19



20. James McKay, Reminiscences of the Last Kafir War (Cape Town: C. Struik, 1970), 11.21. McKay, Reminiscences, 11-12. 22. Peter B. Boyden, ed., The British Army in Cape Colony: Soldiers’ Letters and Diaries, 1806-

58 (Society for Army Historical Research, Special Publication No. 15, 2001), Private George Witcherley to his parents, 24 October 1828, 54.

23. Boyden, The British Army, Captain John Crawfurd to Captain (ret.) William Lodden, 4 September 1822, 49.

24. Mostert, Frontiers, 689. For the logistical difficulties and physical hardships associated with operating an expeditionary force with a supply train east of the Fish River, see Basil le Cor-deur and Christopher Saunders, eds., The War of the Axe, 1847: Correspondence between the Gov-ernor of the Cape Colony, Sir Henry Pottinger, and the Commander of the British forces at the Cape, Sir George Berkeley, and Others ( Johannesburg: Brenthurst Press, 1981), Sir George Berkeley, Memoranda on the Kaffir War in 1847. Communicated by Lieutenant-General Sir George Berkeley, K.C.B., Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army (Madras, 1850), 37-44.

As Adams and the other soldiers quickly realized, the Cape Colony turned out to be anything but a Garden of Eden. This was partly due to the conditions that characterized military service at the Cape. Ordinary soldiers particularly resented the colony’s inadequate provisioning system. Sergeant James McKay remembered “how little attention during the past wars in this colony has been paid to the comfort of the marching soldier.”20 Unlike in India, where native coolies carried water for the troops, in South Africa “the soldier act[ed] as the beast of burden...and…had to carry with him what ever he thought necessary.”21 This seems to have rarely been enough. Commenting on the hardships endured during a punitive expedition against the Xhosa in 1828, Private George Witcherley of the 55th Regiment of Foot remarked: “We suffered sevierly [sic] from [want of ] Rations and warter [sic]… we was for 6 days at a time With only one Paund [sic] of Meat Per day and that such as the Dogs would not eat at home….”22 The officer class had to cope with a different type of inconvenience while serving at the Cape. Although writing in an earlier period, the comments made by Captain John Crawfurd are equally applicable to the period between 1834 and 1853. In 1822 he complained that “Here…is nothing but bare pay and a trifling allowance for keeping a horse which the frequent patrols render necessary and which is hardly sufficient to defray the expense.”23

If these conditions were not enough to dispel the myth of the Garden of Eden, fighting against the Xhosa under the geographic and climatic conditions of the Eastern Cape usually did. Military operations consisted of long marches through bush, mountains, and plains, and exposed the men to drenching rain or scorching heat. As Noël Mostert noted in his magisterial narrative of the frontier wars, “The combination of intensely hot and dry temperatures and lashing rain that turned the ground into a sticky, boot-sucking mess created particularly unpleasant fighting conditions.”24 Under these circumstances, the soldiers’ outward appearance quickly deteriorated beyond recognition. “The 6th,” a captain noted during the Eighth Frontier War, “[wear] their red coats patched with

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25. W. R. King, Campaigning in Kaffirland or Scenes and Adventures in the Kaffir War of 1851-2, 2nd ed. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1855), 110, 260. For similar comments, see Shipp, Memoirs, 67; and E. Napier, The Times, 14 December 1850.

26.The journals of Major William Cox and Lieutenant William Francis Drummond Jer-vois do not include a single entry regarding interactions with the Xhosa during times of peace. See Cox, Peace and War, Diary, 6 June 1829 to 4 October 1834, 7-11; and Boyden, British Army, Journal of Lieutenant William Francis Drummond Jervois, 7 December 1842 to 25 January 1843, 80-88. In the aftermath of the Sixth Frontier War, the colonial administration recognized their lack of knowledge and tried to establish intelligence networks among the Xhosa. However, these networks proved unreliable because, as Richard Price convincingly argues, the Xhosa chiefs were well aware of these official and unofficial spies and circumvented them accordingly. See Price, Making Empire, 242-44.

27. Bayly defines “affective knowledge” as the “knowledge which is derived from the cre-ation of moral communities…by means of conversion, acculturation, or interbreeding.” See C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 7-8.

28. On Lieutenant-General Lord Charles Henry Somerset’s order of 1817, see P. J. Young, Boot and Saddle: A Narrative of the Cape Regiment, the British Cape Mounted Riflemen, the Frontier Armed Mounted Police, and the Colonial Cape Mounted Riflemen (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1955), 13.

29. Adams, Narrative, 132.30. Adams, Narrative, 48.

leather, canvas, and cloth of all colours…tattered trowsers [sic], and broken boots revealing stockingless feet….”25

Even more distressing than these physical hardships was the fact that the soldiers had very little direct knowledge of their enemy and his mode of warfare. The evidence suggests that even the British soldiers who occupied the frontier garrisons along the Fish River and patrolled the border with Xhosaland had only limited interaction with the indigenous population in times of peace.26 As a result the British troops were deprived of what C. A. Bayly has called “affective knowledge” of their African neighbors.27 The lack of interaction may have been due to a standing military order that forbade British soldiers to cross the boundary into Xhosaland unless on official business. In effect since 1817, the order was designed to minimize potential provocations of the Xhosa.28 Casual contact with the Xhosa may have been difficult for other reasons as well. Although there is evidence that some soldiers learned the Xhosa language over time, initially the language barrier did nothing to facilitate cross-cultural contact between garrison troops and the indigenous population.29 In fact, the language barrier could all too easily lead to cultural misunderstandings which, on the frontier, could have deadly consequences. For instance, on one occasion, twenty soldiers were cutting wood when some interaction between a soldier and a Xhosa woman (perhaps of a sexual nature) triggered a sudden and major gathering of irate Xhosa warriors. “Within half an hour,” one of the soldiers recalled, “there were about 200 gathered around us and we could see them coming from all directions.”30 The soldiers hastened to



31. Adams, Narrative, 48-49.32. In the nineteenth century, whites usually referred to the Xhosa as “Kafirs,” “Kaffirs,”

or “Caffres.” I have followed Peires’s logic for substituting these insulting terms with the word Xhosa in square brackets in direct quotations. See J. B. Peires, The Dead Will Arise, xii.

33. Boyden, The British Army, Jervois to his parents, 1 January 1842, 57. 34. McKay, Reminiscences, 40-41.

their fort while the number of Xhosa continued to increase from 200 to 500 and then to 1,000. Without ever knowing what exactly had triggered the sudden unrest, the soldiers then witnessed the execution of the Xhosa woman by her people.31

In addition to the language barrier, the soldiers serving on the frontier had to cope with cultural distance. For some frontier soldiers, this cultural distance translated into cultural arrogance that prevented them from establishing useful channels of communication even with those Xhosa who proactively sought cross-cultural contact. A telling example is Lieutenant William Francis Drummond Jervois of the Royal Engineers. Writing to his parents from his post at Fort Peddie in 1842, Jervois remarked:

Near us lives Stock [Stokwe], one of the [Xhosa]32 chiefs: He has paid me one or two visits, but I find he comes merely for the purpose of seeing what he can get given him. He always arrives with an interpreter & three followers; They ask for tobacco and drink, which is in fact what they come for…. I always tell them, I can’t see them now. I have got quite tired of them, for they are nothing more or less than downright bores.33

British soldiers who arrived in the colony as reinforcements during times of war knew even less about their opponents. This is vividly demonstrated by an incident during the Eighth Frontier War when, in the aftermath of a skirmish in the Amatola Mountains, a group of soldiers interacted casually with some members of the Cape Mounted Rifles, not realizing that the latter were actually hostile deserters. Sergeant McKay blamed this mistake on widespread ignorance, explaining that “at this point we thought all the enemy we had to contend against were [Xhosa], and about them we knew very little.”34 Given these conditions, British soldiers encountered the Xhosa primarily during times of war, and it was during these highly intense, traumatic, and personal encounters that these soldiers formed the deepest and most lasting impressions of them. Perhaps not surprisingly, warfare and violence shaped many of the themes of the military knowledge system of the Xhosa.

Treacherous SavagesThe British high command used these wartime experiences to characterize the

Xhosa as the sole culprits for the frontier wars. The explanations that were given for the culpability of the Xhosa centered on the notion of the treacherous savage who acted on the impulse of the moment and was driven by a natural urge for

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35. This represented a departure from earlier characterizations. For example, Barrow stated that “War is not made by them for extension of territory or individual aggrandizement, but for some direct insult or act of injustice against the whole, or some member, of the community.” See John Barrow, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798, 2 vols. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1801-1804), 1:202.

36. George McCall Theal, Documents Relating to the Kaffir War of 1835 (London: Clowes and Sons, 1912), Smith to D’Urban, 14 January 1835, 13.

37. Theal, Documents, Smith to D’Urban, 14 January 1835, 13.38. As far as can be inferred from his autobiography and his biographers, Smith never

visited the eastern frontier before the war. See Sir Harry Smith, The Autobiography of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Smith, Baronet of Aliwal on the Sutlej, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (London: John Murray, 1903), 359-368; A. L. Harrington, Sir Harry Smith – Bungling Hero (Cape Town: Tafel-berg Pub., 1980); and Joseph H. Lehman, Remember You are an Englishman: A Biography of Sir Harry Smith, 1787-1860 (London: Trinity Press, 1977).

39. Theal, Documents, Smith to his sister, Mrs. Sargant, 7 May 1835, 154.40. Stretch, Journal, 17-18.

murder and plunder.35 Through this metaphor, British soldiers characterized the Xhosa as a continued security risk and justified postwar policies of dispossession and subjugation.

It was Colonel Harry Smith who felt most comfortable with this characterization of the Xhosa and rarely failed to promote it in his correspondence. Writing to Governor D’Urban shortly after the outbreak of the Sixth Frontier War, he dwelt on the Xhosa’s “treacherous Invasion of the Colonial Territory” that resulted in “the merciless slaughter of its subjects and the spoliation of their country.”36 In his view it was the Xhosa’s “unconquerable propensity to commit robbery and murder” that was responsible for the violence on the eastern frontier.37 Smith’s observations were not based on actual encounters with the Xhosa but rather reflected his preconceived notions of them, refined by his disgust with a people who destroyed British lives and property.38 Once these ideas had settled, subsequent face to face encounters with actual Xhosa did not materially alter his views. Upon meeting the paramount chief Hintsa in May 1835, Smith reaffirmed his ideas about the Xhosa stating that “The whole race…are a perfidious set, actuated by the feelings of the moment… slaves of momentary feeling, possessing nothing but a love of mischief, rapine, and injustice ….”39

Smith’s opinion was not universally accepted. Some soldiers viewed the Xhosa as victims. One of the most visible proponents of this alternative characterization was Captain Charles Lennox Stretch who had lived on the eastern frontier for seventeen years prior to the outbreak of the Sixth Frontier War. Regarding the cause of the war, Stretch, like other humanitarians, noted that the colonists had abused the Xhosa by reclaiming cattle to which they were not entitled.40 He also argued that the Xhosa were rightfully upset about the recent expulsion from their land near the Gaga River. “It was particularly grievous at the time,” Stretch explained, “from the circumstance of their crops being nearly ready for harvest,



41. Stretch, Journal, 11 February 1835, 27.42. Stretch, Journal, 27 April 1835, 61.43. Stretch, Journal, 25 April 1835, 59; Stretch, Journal, 17-18.44. Theal, Documents, D’Urban to R. W. Hay, Under Secretary of State, 24 March 1835,

112-113.45. Theal, Documents, D’Urban to Aberdeen, 19 June 1835, 213. 46. Peires, House of Phalo, 114, 122. Colonel Smith also had strong reasons to promote the

discourse of the treacherous savage. He had been offered land near the Buffalo River in case the Xhosa were driven beyond the Kei. See Theal, Documents, Smith to his sister, Mrs. Sargant, 7 May 1835, 152.

the country very dry and many families without food to eat….”41 Over the course of the war, Stretch’s viewpoint was reinforced by his growing disgust with waging a brutal war against the Xhosa. A particularly formative moment came when Stretch saw the wife of a Xhosa chief bleeding to death after having been shot by a colonial soldier. “The expression of fear and pain exhibited in the countenance of the former,” he recorded in his diary, “was so truly distressing that I felt ashamed of being in command….It was too much for me…I hurried from the melancholy scene lamenting I was ever employed on such duty.”42 Stretch was not alone in his sympathies for the Xhosa. Major William Cox, who had first moved to the frontier in 1828, and Captain Henry Jervis, commander of Fort Willshire, agreed with his assessment.43 Even Benjamin D’Urban, Governor of the Cape Colony and Commander in Chief of the colonial forces, did not initially accept Smith’s characterization of the Xhosa as treacherous savages. He was keenly aware that the Xhosa had plenty of reasons to be unhappy about colonial policies. Writing to the Undersecretary of State R. W. Hay in March, 1835, D’Urban identified the “ill-advised measure of expelling the tribes composing the family of Gaika, Tyalie, and Macomo from the grounds they had so long held on the Chumie,” as the main cause for the outbreak of the Sixth Frontier War.44

However, only three months later, D’Urban had become a convert to Smith’s notion of the treacherous savage. In a letter to the Secretary of State for Colonies, D’Urban now argued that the Xhosa were like “wolves…which, if they be caught young, may be brought…to an appearance of tameness, but which invariably throw it off, and appear in all their native fierceness of the woods, as soon as the temptation of blood and ravage, which never fails to elicit their natural ferocity, presents itself to their instinctive thirst for it.”45 D’Urban’s miraculous conversion may have been motivated by political opportunism, for the conservative faction among the colonial settlers had long desired the land between the Fish and Kei Rivers in general, and between the Fish and Keiskamma Rivers in particular.46 Perhaps not surprisingly, D’Urban appropriated Smith’s stereotype of the treacherous savage to justify the occupation of western Xhosaland in the name of future colonial security against this supposedly unpredictable enemy. In the same letter mentioned above, D’Urban therefore informed the metropolitan authorities that “This extension of the Colonial Border had now become not only expedient,

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47. Theal, Documents, D’Urban to Aberdeen, 19 June 1835, 218-9.48. This humanitarian faction also included, in addition to Major Cox, Captain Jervis, and

Captain Stretch, Lieutenant Henry D. Warden.49. Stretch, Journal, 26 August 1835, 127.50. Stretch, Journal, 26 August 1835, 127. 51. Stretch, Journal, 27 August 1835, 127-8.52. Upon the receipt of Cox’s letter, the governor claimed that Cox “takes a false view of

the matter….we must be quietly on the alert, well guarded against the treachery and attempts of surprise of the savages….” See Theal, Documents, D’Urban to Smith, 28 August 1835, 354.

53. Theal, Documents, Smith to D’Urban, 30 August 1835, 357; and 31 August 1835, 361.54. Stretch, Journal, 27 August 1835, 127-8. They were encouraged by the fact that Maqo-

ma actively tried to prevent cattle theft despite the delay in the negotiations. “This fresh instance of Macomo’s sincerity was reported to the Governor this day by Major Cox,” Stretch noted, “and as Sutton observed, it would be injustice to continue the war with a man who evinced so much desire to be friends with us.” See Stretch, Journal, 3 September 1835, 130.

but also absolutely indispensable…[as] a defensible barrier between the heart of the Colony and the savage tribes ….”47

While the metaphor of the treacherous savage gained new converts at D’Urban’s headquarter in Grahamstown, the alternative discourse remained behind the closed doors of distant frontier posts. In fact, its voice and influence on military policies toward the Xhosa only became apparent during the peace negotiations that concluded the Sixth Frontier War. In the context of these negotiations the humanitarian faction in the British Army most actively promoted their alternative view of the Xhosa and contested D’Urban’s policies of dispossession.48 Major Cox became especially outspoken. In private conversations with fellow soldiers he ardently defended the Xhosa. “If my letter book was called for,” he declared, “it would reveal many strange stories in favor of [the Xhosa chiefs] Macomo and Charley [Tyhali].”49 He also alluded to the fact that Maqoma’s and Tyhali’s expulsion from their homelands had been mishandled by the authorities.50 In August 1835, Major Cox went one step further when he formally pleaded with the governor to not expel the Xhosa from their ancestral lands.51

However, D’Urban and Smith responded negatively to these humanitarian demands. Instead, they prepared for a renewal of the war effort in case the Xhosa did not submit to British rule.52 “The Major [Cox] takes a very erroneous view of the conduct of these [Xhosa] Chiefs,” Smith informed D’Urban, adding that “both Cox and Warden tried to make up all the differences amicably, which will not do with a [Xhosa]; he must have the word crammed down his throat.”53 Despite this setback, the military’s humanitarian faction remained steadfast. In order to deprive the high command of any pretext to renew the war effort, they established an unofficial channel of communication with the Xhosa chiefs in the hope that the latter could be convinced to adopt a remorseful attitude in the forthcoming peace negotiations.54 This time Captain Stretch took the lead and in a private letter advised Maqoma to be submissive and remorseful in order to



55. Stretch, Journal, 5 September 1835, 130-131. Given Stretch’s role in the peace negotia-tions, it is perhaps not surprising that Nqgika Xhosa remembered him as the “Uxolo ilizwe” (the Peacemaker). See Milton, The Edges of War, 143.

56. James Edward Alexander, Excursions in Western Africa, and Narrative of A Campaign in Kaffir-Land, on the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), Appendix No. 2, 2: 339-342.

57. For example, the Xhosa had to give up many of their Mfengu (Fingo) clients, hand over some of their land, and accept European magistrates with considerable power over them.

deprive D’Urban and Smith of any reason to renew hostilities and seize their land.55 The plan worked: during the formal peace meeting on September 6, 1835, the Xhosa chiefs asked for mercy, promised to become faithful British subjects and, in return, were allowed to retain parts of their ancestral homeland.56

Although the peace agreement had several negative consequences for the Xhosa, the humanitarian faction among the soldiers had achieved a partial victory by preventing the military hardliners from expelling the Xhosa completely from their homeland.57 With hindsight, this achievement may appear less significant because a subsequent Parliamentary investigation, convened through the pressure

Although this image does not represent the actual meeting between Xhosa and British negotiators in 1835, based on the descriptions of eyewitnesses it must have looked very similar. The conference at Block Drift, Kaffir Land [between Lieutenant-Governor John Hare and the Xhosa some weeks prior to the outbreak of the 7th Frontier War] - Jany. 30th 1846. By Rudolph Ackermann, 1852. Courtesy of Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection.

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58. Crais, White Supremacy, 78, 117, 119.59. W. F. T., ed., “An Irish Subaltern in South Africa, 1846-1849,” Royal United Service In-

stitution, 59 (1914: July/Nov.), Ensign William Fleming to his brother, 2 February, 1847, 189. 60. King, Campaigning, 14. My emphasis. 61. For more details, see Peires, The Dead Will Rise, 6-7.62. George Cathcart, Correspondence of Lieut.-General the Hon. Sir George Cathcart, K. C.

B., Relative to his Military Operations in Kaffraria, until the Termination of the Kafir War, and to his Measures for the Future Maintenance of Peace on that Frontier and the Protection and Welfare of the People of South Africa (London: John Murray, 1856), Cathcart to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 20 May 1852, 66-7.

63. Cathcart, Correspondence, Cathcart to Grey, 11 February 1853, 25; and Cathcart to Grey, 11 February 1853, 31. The force consisted of six battalions of British infantry (3,600 men) and 811 men of the Cape Mounted Rifles, as well as one company of Royal Artillery with four guns. See Ibid.

of humanitarian interest groups in London, revoked many of D’Urban’s and Smith’s harsh postwar policies.58 However, the historical record would be incomplete if these soldiers and their alternative characterization of the Xhosa as victims were ignored. This is especially true if one considers that in the two subsequent frontier wars this alternative discourse vanished both within the military establishment and the general public, allowing the stereotype of the Xhosa as treacherous savages to reign uncontested. For instance, most soldiers serving during the Seventh Frontier War seem to have agreed with their fellow Irish soldier who noted, “I hate them [the Xhosa] they are so cowardly and treacherous.”59 The same view seems to have prevailed during the Eighth Frontier War. For instance, in Captain W. R. King’s estimation, the “settlers [had] lived on the most friendly terms with the neighbouring [Xhosa], constantly entertaining them as their guests, and employing many on their farms. Of their hospitality the [Xhosa] treacherously availed themselves to the full, to allay suspicion and prepare the way for the intended massacre.”60

Unchallenged, this view enabled British military leaders to impose ever more severe postwar policies on the Xhosa in the name of future colonial security. For instance, in the aftermath of the Seventh Frontier War, this renewed focus on the alleged treacherousness of the Xhosa allowed Governor Harry Smith to permanently annex the territory between the Fish and Keiskamma Rivers (District of Victoria), turn the rest of Western Xhosaland into a genuine British dependency (British Kaffraria), and force the Xhosa chiefs to recognize him as their paramount chief.61 Although Smith’s successor, Governor Cathcart, was less delusional than King and less egotistical than Smith, his postwar measures followed the same rationale at the end of the Eighth Frontier war. In order to ensure security for the colony, he argued that the Xhosa had to be policed and controlled more effectively than ever before. As a result, he ordered the construction of watchtowers all across the Xhosa homeland.62 In addition, Cathcart planned to relocate “rebellious” chiefs and their followers to reservations where they would be policed with a permanent military force of 4500 men.63 And it was the full implementation of some of



64. Crais, White Supremacy, 197.65. Shipp, Memoirs, 65.66. Theal, Documents, D’Urban to Spring Rice, 21 January 1835, 30. My emphasis.67. Shipp, Memoirs, 68. 68. Alexander, Excursions, 2:23. See also Anonymous, “Journal of an Officer serving in Kaf-

firland, from the Outbreak of the present War,” Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal 3 (1851): 23.

these directives by Governor Sir George Grey that completed the conquest and subjugation of the Western Xhosa polities by the end of the 1850s.64

Merciless BarbariansThe metaphor of the treacherous savage was also powerful and popular between

1834 and 1853 because it tied in nicely with the characterization of the Xhosa as merciless barbarians whose “uncivilized” mode of warfare consisted of murder and devastation, thrived on guerrilla tactics, and encompassed the mutilation and torture of captured soldiers. Already in the aftermath of the Third Frontier War (1799-1801), a British private had exclaimed that “The savage [Xhosa] exults in these appalling sights; gaping wounds, and the pangs of the dying, are to his dark and infatuated mind the very acme of enjoyment.”65 In the Sixth Frontier War, Governor D’Urban also propagated this characterization of the Xhosa. Writing to the Colonial Office on January 21, 1835, D’Urban emphasized “the devastation and horrors which these merciless Barbarians have committed,” and “the murders, which have gone hand in hand with all this work of pillage and rapine….”66 However, it was the Xhosa’s guerrilla tactics and the real and imagined scenes of mutilation and torture that gave British soldiers the best material to portray the Xhosa as merciless barbarians.

Over the course of the frontier wars, the Xhosa focused increasingly on guerrilla tactics to combat the British expeditionary forces. Taking advantage of the mountain ranges, such as the Amatola Mountains and the Waterkloof, and the deep forests of their homeland, the Xhosa relied primarily on ambushes to fight off British military incursions into Xhosaland. This gave British soldiers the opportunity to characterize the Xhosa warriors as merciless barbarians who used animal-like stealth to approach and then kill their unsuspecting victims. Reflecting on his experiences in 1799, one British soldier wrote, “The [Xhosa] possesses a great deal of cunning and craft….under the garb of night, they will crawl on their hands and knees...so that you may walk close by, and not observe them; and the first indication given you of having such dangerous neighbors, is by the incision of a spear….”67 In the subsequent wars, this vision of the “cunning” Xhosa warrior who kills “by the incision of a spear” persisted. For example, Captain James E. Alexander, who served in the Sixth Frontier War, allegedly witnessed how a band of Xhosa ambushed a British convoy of wagons and killed several of the men with their spears. He was particularly disturbed by the death of a fellow soldier named Bilson, “a man of great size and strength” who was “quickly surrounded and assegaied” by the Xhosa enemy.68

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69. Parliament, House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on the Kafir Tribes; Together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence (London, 2 August 1851), Re-port of Major John Jarvis Bisset, 120-121, 125, 135. For the Xhosa’s access to guns, see especially William Kelleher Storey, Guns, Race, and Power in Colonial South Africa (New York: Cambridge, 2008), 70ff. Peires argues that the guns of the Xhosa were of inferior quality and thus not very effective in fighting the British. This is not entirely convincing since fighting often occurred at close quarters where accuracy mattered less. For the same reason, it is also doubtful whether the British derived a significant tactical advantage from introducing the more accurate Minié Rifle during the Eighth Frontier War. Compare Peires, The Dead Will Arise, 17, with King, Campaign-ing, 214-15; The South African Journals of Major E. A. Holdich, Staffordshire Regimental Museum, 20 February 1851, 43.

70. John J. Bisset, Sports and War or Recollections of Fighting and Hunting in South Africa from the Years 1834 to 1867 with a Narrative of H. R. H. the Duke of Edinburgh’s Visit to the Cape (London: John Murray, 1875), 63-69.

71. Bisset, Sports and War, 82. 72. King, Campaigning, 136; Alexander, Excursions, 2:12; Edward Wellesley, Letters of a Vic-

torian Army Officer, Edward Wellesley: Major, 73rdRegiment of Foot, 1840-1854 (Stroud: Alan Sut-ton, 1995), Wellesley to brother Richard, 14 June 1851, 30; Bisset, Sports and War, 76, 112-3.

73. King, Campaigning, 146; and McKay, Reminiscences, 164-5.74. King, Campaigning, 146. Because of this officers were forbidden to wear their distinctive

blue frock coats during the wars against the Xhosa, see W. F. T., ed., “An Irish Subaltern,” Ensign Fleming to mother, 14 February 1849, 201.

75. McKay, Reminiscences, 139.

Although the assegai remained a feared weapon, the soldiers also dreaded the Xhosa’s growing access to firearms.69 In fact, the Xhosa’s successful integration of firearms into their guerrilla tactics rendered them more dangerous and their tactics more contemptible in the eyes of many soldiers. For example, the Xhosa warriors quickly learned that targeting the oxen-teams that pulled British supply wagons was a sure way of immobilizing the trains, increasing the chances for plunder and enemy casualties. By adopting these methods, the Xhosa captured fifty-two wagons, including the baggage-wagons of the 7th Dragoon Guards, the Royal artillery limber-wagon, and the hospital store wagon during a single ambush at Burns Hill.70 One soldier later remembered that “It took several hours before we could successfully fight the whole of the wagons through this three miles of bush, and there was not a span of oxen that had not two or three of the team killed….”71 In addition, night attacks and shooting from tree-tops or otherwise concealed positions became part of the dreaded Xhosa way of war.72 Particularly upsetting was the Xhosa’s alleged propensity for targeting British officers. Captain King witnessed how three regimental officers were mortally wounded over the course of a single engagement on the Waterkloof in November 1851.73 Frustrated by the experience, he noted that officers were “a coveted mark to very lurking [Khoikhoi] or [Xhosa]….”74 Perhaps even more reprehensible for the British was the alleged Xhosa practice of shooting at soldiers trying to rescue wounded comrades. “Whenever the enemy shot a man,” Sergeant McKay explained, “they took particular care of him, and it was a rather dangerous experiment to go near where the dead lay.”75



76. Bisset, Sports and War, 63-69; Adams, Narrative, 124-5; Major John Hope Gibson’s report, reprinted in The Times 30 June 1846.

77. P. H. Butterfield, ed., “Private Innes and the War of the Axe, 1847,” Looking Back: Port Elizabeth Historical Society 25 (1985), Private Alex Innes to mother, 13 January 1847, 108.

78. Le Cordeur and Saunders, eds., The War of the Axe, Sir George Berkeley, Memoranda on the Kaffir War in 184, 43.

79. Bisset, Sports and War, 132ff.80. King, Campaigning, 89-90.81. Bisset, Sports and War, 140. 82. For Colonel Fordyce’s retreat through the Kroomie Forest on the 8th of September

1851, see the official reports reprinted in The Times, 6-7 November 1851, and the comments made by Major E. A. Holdich in Journals of Holdich, 12 September 1851, 100. For other success-ful Xhosa ambushes, see Colonel Henry Somerset’s reverse against the Xhosa near Fort Hare on December 29, 1850, and Colonel George Henry Mackinnon’s defeat by the Xhosa in early September 1851 during which the British troops suffered some 75 casualties. For details on these operations, see The Times, 7 March 1851; Journals of Holdich, 11-17 September 1851, 100-103.

In addition to becoming competent marksmen, the Xhosa also refined their ambush tactics over the course of the three frontier wars. For example, in the Seventh Frontier War, the Xhosa successfully attacked a British column near Burns Hill at the narrowest part of the trail.76 Writing to his mother, one soldier, serving in the 91st Regiment of Foot, noted that “Wherever they [the Xhosa] see A small party of men they Attack them and cut them of(f ).”77 After having himself witnessed a Xhosa ambush while operating his army east of the Fish River, Sir Charles Berkeley, the commander of the British forces during the Seventh Frontier War, had to admit that “the place was admirably selected for an attack of this kind, the assailants being [so] completely concealed by the bush that it was impossible to make out their numbers.”78 During the subsequent Eighth Frontier War, the number of successful Xhosa ambushes increased. One of them occurred at the Boomah Pass, at a place where the narrow space prevented the cavalry from coming to the aid of the cornered British infantry.79 “The underwood swarmed with [Xhosa],” Captain King remembered, “they were perched in the trees, firing upon us from above, and rushed from the bush below in hundreds, yelling in the most diabolical and ferocious manner….”80 According to Bisset, who was severely wounded in the action, “Twenty-three soldiers were killed in the pass or fell into the enemy’s hands….”81 The Xhosa carried out another successful surprise attack against Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Fordyce’s retreating column of Scottish Highlanders and Mfengu allies in the Kroomie Forest on September 8, 1851 (see cover illustration). An additional twenty-eight British soldiers lost their lives in this action.82

Ironically, while the soldiers’ frustration about these guerrilla tactics reinforced the stereotype of the merciless barbarian, it also promoted an alternative theme that partly contradicted this negative view. Rather than characterizing the Xhosa as barbarians, this alternative view described them as a martial race. Already in one of the earliest frontier wars, soldiers had learned to respect the martial abilities of the Xhosa. For example, while the civilian John Barrow described the

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83. Barrow, Account, 1:201-2, 2:33. 84. Shipp, Memoirs, 66.85. King, Campaigning, 171.86. Alexander, Excursions, 2:48. See also Bisset, Sports and War, 71, 75.87. Theal, Documents, Smith to D’Urban, 22 January 1835, 36; and Smith to D’Urban, 14

February 1835, 62.88. King, Campaigning, 89-90.89. King, Campaigning, 148.90. King, Campaigning, 145. 91. King, Campaigning, 172.

Xhosa as “harmless” people whose “habits and way of life are better suited for the herdsman than for the warrior” and whose spears could be “easily avoided,” 83 the young John Shipp, who served with the 91st Regiment of Foot, had an entirely different opinion. In his record of the same war, Shipp noted that “The [Xhosa] may unquestionably be considered as a formidable enemy. They are…such famous marksmen with their darts, that they will make sure of their aim at sixty or eighty paces’ distance.”84 Soldiers who served during the three frontier wars between 1834 and 1853 agreed with Shipp’s rather than Barrow’s assessment of the Xhosa’s martial abilities. Regarding the Xhosa’s skill in handling their assegais, Captain King noted that “They hurl them with incredible force; and, as I have myself seen, can send them clean through a man’s body.”85 The soldiers also admired the alleged habit of the Xhosa never to give or demand quarter from their enemies. “A single [Xhosa], if surrounded,” Captain Alexander explained, “would stand up and throw his assegais to the last. This determined spirit of ‘no surrender’ is to be admired.”86 Captain King and Captain Alexander were not alone in their positive estimation of the Xhosa’s valor. Even a soldier who was as implacably hostile toward the Xhosa as Colonel Smith considered them as proficient in guerrilla tactics as the Spanish, and “bold, intrepid, and skillful in the bush.”87

British soldiers were also intimidated by the impressive physique of their African antagonists. One of the Highlanders explained that the combination of their “white teeth; their bloody faces, brawny limbs, and enormous size” gave them “a most formidable appearance.”88 The same soldier had the chance to see a group of Xhosa advancing through the bush and considered their ability to move without producing the slightest noise as “perfectly marvelous.”89 In fact, he acknowledged that although the British troops were usually victorious, the Xhosa were far better at bush warfare: “Armed only with his gun, or assegais, free and unencumbered by pack, clothing, or accoutrements…he climbs the rocks, and works through the familiar bush with stealth and agility of the tiger ….”90

Given these impressions, it was only natural that some soldiers saw in the Xhosa the distinct characteristics of a martial race whose upbringing and physical characteristics made them natural warriors. “With these effective weapons…in the hands of an athletic, sagacious, and undaunted race, who are trained from infancy to their use,” one officer remarked, “the [Xhosa] were a most formidable foe ….”91



92. Alexander, Excursions, 2:261-2.93. Stretch, Journal, 13 July 1835, 107.94. Stretch, Journal, 13 and 14 July 1835, 107-8. 95. The Times, 2 November 1836; The Times, 7 March 1853.96. Boyden, The British Army, Private Thomas Scott, Diary, 16 September 1851, 111.97. McKay, Reminiscences, 97. My emphasis.98. Bisset, Sports and War, 28.

Some soldiers even fantasized about a future role for the Xhosa in the service of the British Empire in Africa. Upon seeing a group of Xhosa horsemen and infantry approaching a British fort, Captain Alexander was thoroughly impressed by their military demeanor. “What active troops these would make…,” he noted in his account of the Sixth Frontier War, “if properly handled, how useful as defenders of the British possessions in this beautiful part of our mighty empire!”92

However, as the images of unavenged deaths and real and imagined mutilations multiplied, the stereotype of the merciless barbarian by and large eclipsed this alternative characterization of the Xhosa warriors. Admittedly, the carnage of the frontier wars was often shockingly real, albeit hardly indicative of any exceptional cruelty on the part of the Xhosa. For example, while campaigning in the Amatolas in 1835, Captain Stretch witnessed how 300 Xhosa warriors ambushed and destroyed a patrol of allied Khoikhoi soldiers.93 When he subsequently encountered their lifeless bodies, Stretch noted in his diary: “Willems, a fine well-made Hottentot…had numerous wounds about his arms and on his front and back….The stomach of Prins was almost beaten out…..”94 In the subsequent frontier wars such images multiplied as the number of British casualties increased from 100 in 1835 to 1,400 in 1853.95 For instance, during the operations on the Waterkloof in September 1851, Private Thomas Scott, serving with the 12th Regiment of Foot, recorded in his diary that “On the way through the parth [sic] ….we fired going Through on both sides and there Was one of our men shot ded [sic] and Was not able to bring him out Because the [Xhosa] were two [sic] Strong for us….And there was another Man Of ours that had his laget [sic] shot of [sic] and there was A grate [sic] number of the 74th shot ded [sic]….”96 In the same area in 1852, McKay witnessed the death of an older soldier who was unable to retreat fast enough from the approaching Xhosa warriors. “He was surrounded by a black mass of merciless savages,” the sergeant wrote in his memoirs, “Mercy, he seemed to ask,—but mercy there was none for him.”97

While these images of death and destruction reinforced the idea of the merciless barbarian, the discourse about real and alleged mutilations had arguably the most significant effect in this regard. In all three frontier wars, the theme of mutilated British soldiers was a significant element in the military discourse about the Xhosa. Already in the Sixth Frontier War, Bisset, then a young recruit in the Corps of Guides, recalled having seen the mutilated body of a much-loved officer named T. C. White.98 As the wars became longer, the soldiers’ accounts of alleged Xhosa atrocities became more numerous, more descriptive, and more fantastic. In the subsequent war, the same soldier mentioned the discovery of the

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99. Bisset, Sports and War, 65-66. For additional accounts of alleged atrocities, see Bisset, Sports and War, 102; Adams, Narrative, 191, 194, 195; Letter of a soldier of the 73rd Regiment, The Times, 28 January 1848.

100. King, Campaigning, 13. See also Journals of Holdich, 28 March and 4 April 1851, 53, 55; Bisset, Sports and War, 149-150.

101. Bisset, Sports and War, 150.102. Peires, The Dead Will Arise, 23.103. King, Campaigning, 91-93; McKay, Reminiscences, 106; and Boyden, The British Army,

Diary of Private Thomas Scott, entry for 1 November 1851, 113.

mutilated bodies of several fallen comrades. According to his account, “One of the wounded men…had been lashed to the limber of the wagon and burnt alive. A most ghastly grin was on the poor man’s face; his wrists and legs were lacerated with the thongs, and his body charred by the fire; his belly was ripped open with an assaigai [sic], and his bowels protruded.”99 In the Eighth Frontier War, the description of real and alleged Xhosa atrocities continued unabated. “A large body of [Xhosa]…barbarously murdered…a sergeant and fourteen privates,” Captain King explained, “leaving their bodies on the ground, where they where found…horribly mutilated—which was afterwards discovered to have been perpetrated before death—and with their throats cut from ear to ear.”100

Moreover, the soldiers increasingly developed theories about the motive behind the real and imagined atrocities which rendered the stereotype of the “merciless barbarian” both more real and revolting. For example, Bisset explained the headless bodies as a function of Xhosa witchcraft:

This was done by the doctors, or devils, passing a stick, with a cross-stick at the end…into the brain-hole at the back of the skull, and then turning it sharply between the palms of the hands until the brain was mashed up and frothed over. Then the ‘devil’ would withdraw her diabolical charm-stick and sprinkle the brains in all directions, making her incantations all the time, to turn the soldiers’ bullets into water, and to make her own people invisible to the foe.101

Historian Jeffrey B. Peires explains that “the Xhosa ripped open the stomachs of their dead enemies” in order to release supernatural forces that they thought could harm them. In addition, believing that “certain parts of the body” contained “magical properties,” the Xhosa mutilated the bodies of dead enemy soldiers in order to remove their liver or head which were particularly treasured. However, British soldiers, who rarely reflected on their own violent actions, were unable to see these practices as expressions of a valid cultural system. For them these practices were merely proofs of the Xhosa’s alleged propensity to engage in merciless barbarism.102

Few accounts of Xhosa mutilation did more to further this notion than the story of the death of Hartung, the beloved bandmaster of the 74th Highland Regiment, during the Eighth Frontier War. Based on the alleged confession of a female Xhosa prisoner, the story of Hartung’s death circulated widely among the soldiery.103 It is useful to quote McKay’s account of Hartung’s death in detail



104. McKay, Reminiscences, 107-108. 105. Theal, Documents, Smith to D’Urban, 22 January 1835, 37. 106. Bisset, Sports and War, 60, 86.107. Diary of T. H. Bramston, Royal Greenjackets Museum, 17 May 1852.108. McKay, Reminiscences, 231.

since it illustrates how the growing frustration of the British soldiers about Xhosa guerrilla tactics and actual Xhosa violence intersected to produce the most detailed (if probably apocryphal) story about Xhosa cruelties in order to reinforce the idea of the merciless barbarian:

Hartong…was…marched to a grassy spot; beneficence they knew not, and he was ordered to stretch himself out at full length on his back, when strong wooden pegs were driven through his wrists into the ground ….On recovering, he…called for water, when the cup containing his blood was held to his fevered lips, and as he raised his head eagerly to reach the proffered draught, thinking it was water, the coagulated blood fell in a mass against his mouth….Being asked by his tormentors next morning whether he desired meat or drink, and his answer being interpreted in the affirmative, the same wretch…now cut off a portion of his body and offered it to him for food….The last act of this terrible tragedy had been fulfilled, for with a convulsive shudder of the body, the spirit of poor Hartong passed into eternity.104

The soldiers’ frustration with these real and imagined mutilations was reinforced by the fact that British troops seldom succeeded in catching the Xhosa by surprise and thus revenge the deaths of their comrades adequately. More often than not, the Xhosa attacked quickly and then vanished into the bush, leaving the British soldiers few opportunities to bring their superior firepower or cavalry to bear on the enemy. “The Savages we have to contend with,” Smith informed D’Urban in 1835, “altho’ contemptible in the field, are like the beast of prey, always wary and careful whenever an enemy is in the neighbourhood to secure a retreat.”105 Commenting on the Seventh Frontier War, Bisset noted that “as in all [Xhosa] wars or bushfighting, when the savages find the tide of fortune going against them they disperse in a manner which no other troops in the world possess, they disappear like needles in straw.”106 The Xhosa continued to be equally elusive in the subsequent war. During one offensive operation in 1852, Lieutenant Thomas Harvey Bramston of the Rifle Brigade spotted 200 Xhosa warriors heading toward his firing position. But before the Xhosa were within his range they had entered the bush and disappeared from sight.107

The soldiers’ inability to counter the Xhosa’s guerrilla tactics also added to this frustration. “It was disagreeable work,” McKay recalled after having spent a fruitless night in an ambush position, “…We were never fortunate enough to trap any of these rascals….”108 Other soldiers shared McKay’s sentiments. After returning from a patrol that had involved 2,500 men, consumed 77,000 rounds of ammunition, and “bagged” a trifling array of enemy matériel, Major Edward

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109. Journals of Holdich, 19 February 1851, 43. For additional expressions of frustration, see Journal of Holdich, 26 February, 1-25 March 1851, 46-52; Wellesley, Letters, Wellesley to wife, 31 May 1851, 22, and to brother Richard, 2 December 1851, 63-64; Diary of Bramston, 10, 17, 23 June 1852.

110. Journal of J. C. G. Kingsley, National Army Museum, 24-25 December 1851.111. Officer’s letter reprinted in The Times, 12 January 1852. 112. Wellesley, Letters, Wellesley to brother Richard, 3 December 1852, 99-100.113. Stretch, Journal, 2 April 1835, 49. See also Stretch, Journal, 15 July 1835, 108; Alex-

ander, Excursions, 2:68.

Allen Holdich voiced his anger in this way: “Returned to King William’s Town…most of the ammunition being expended. Results of the patrol: nix.”109 Two other soldiers were more outspoken than Holdich. “This hateful drudging unsatisfactory war,” remarked one of them, “has lasted now twelvemonth and God knows how much longer it will continue….I am sick, tired to death’s door of wandering about these savage wilds, doing no earthly good….”110 The second soldier voiced his frustration in an equally irate manner. “After much harassing marching in different directions,” he complained, “we returned without doing anything; in fact, this is the history of all movements, and will continue so until we have another General sent out here ‘to take the bull by the horns,’ and thereby do something effectual towards putting an end to this miserable war.”111

It was in this context that the characterization of the merciless barbarian served to justify a change in strategy and tactics toward unlimited warfare against the Xhosa. This “closure of the military mind” is best illustrated in a quote from a letter written by Captain Edward Wellesley. In it one can perceive how the soldiers’ frustration with the Xhosa way of war provided them with the rationale to shed all humanitarian restraints and solve the “Xhosa problem” once and for all:

The Boor [sic] a Dutchman of total indifference and hatred to all Blacks would practice on these occasions a totally different measure, he would invade the country from which the robbers had come and butcher every man, woman and child he could meet and create such terror that no second attempt would be made for some time, none being left to make it. We treat [the Xhosa] as a power like ourselves to be treated with and to make war against as highly civilized and humane people…and in return for our humanity the Enemy murder us in their old accustomed barbarous manner….112

Although Wellesley claimed that the British soldiers, unlike the Boers, did not engage in an unlimited war against the Xhosa, the historical record shows that this is not entirely true. Already in the Sixth Frontier War, British soldiers deliberately targeted the subsistence infrastructure of the Xhosa polities. “Our people were soon among the [Xhosa] huts,” noted a captain serving with the colonial levies, “burning and destroying everything that came in their way.”113 It would be wrong to suggest that the idea of waging total war against the Xhosa was limited to frustrated colonial levies or common soldiers. None other than Colonel Smith agreed with the idea of waging this type of war against the Xhosa. Writing



to D’Urban in August 1835, Smith explained that “for their late treachery, for the merciless murder of every one who falls into their hands, I view them irreclaimable Savages…, whose extermination would be a blessing....”114 In 1835, humanitarian instincts among colonial soldiers, missionaries, and settlers, as well as metropolitan interest groups, prevented Smith from implementing such a war of extermination. However, in the two subsequent frontier wars, the metaphor of the merciless barbarian dominated the discourse about the Xhosa, enabling soldiers to drop humanitarian restraints and justify wartime excesses.

For instance, during the Seventh Frontier War, Governor Henry Pottinger ordered his commander of the frontier forces, Sir Charles Berkeley, in a “most secret and confidential” note to go on the offensive against the Ngqika Xhosa “with such a measure of retribution as shall reduce them to throw themselves on our mercy, by devastating their country, destroying their kraals, crops and cattle, and letting them finally understand that, cost what it may, they must be humbled and subdued.”115 A letter written by a soldier serving in the 45th Regiment confirms that these instructions were indeed carried out. “Since I last wrote,” he explained, “we have spent 10 days in the Amatola Mountains…we burnt and ransacked the whole country….”116 During the Eighth Frontier War the British military took these scorched-earth tactics to a new level. In January 1852 Governor Smith declared that “Now is the time…to subdue…these turbulent [Xhosa]; and my next step will be…to fill the Amatolas with troops, and carry on systematically that devastation, the horrid result of savage war, which will induce the people to submit to my terms….”117 One month later, five divisions initiated the work of burning and destroying cornfields, huts, fences, and kraals in order to force the Xhosa into submission or death through starvation.118 Lieutenant-Colonel William Eyre of the 73d Regiment was especially active. “In the course of about a month,” one soldier serving under Eyre later remembered, “we cut all these crops, besides digging up and destroying great stores of previous year’s grain…and removing all the villages….” In his opinion, this mode of warfare against the Xhosa was entirely justified since “There are no arsenals, dockyards, or other public property to destroy…and therefore we must make war upon the whole people….”119

114. Theal, Documents, Smith to D’Urban, 16 August 1835, 328. My emphasis.115. Le Cordeur and Saunders, eds., War of the Axe, Pottinger to Berkeley, 20 June 1847,

128.116. W. F. T., ed., “An Irish Subaltern,” Ensign William Fleming to ?, 1847, 191.117. British Parliamentary Papers, Colonies, South Africa, Cape of Good Hope, Vol. 33,

Correspondence with the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope relative to the State of the Kafir Tribes, and to the Recent Outbreak on the Eastern Frontier of the Colony, 1853, Smith to Grey, 13 January 1852, 3.

118. Wellesley, Letters, Wellesley to brother Richard, 15 February 1852, 72-3. See also Journal of Kingsley, 30 January and 25 February 1852; Journals of Holdich, 1-28 February 1852, 154-166; Diary of Bramston, 29 April 1852, 6 and 17 May 1852.

119. The Times, 22 December 1860. For Eyre’s destructive work, see also Journals of Holdich, 2, 9, 22 February 1852, 155, 157, 163.

JOCHEN S. ARNDT


What making “war on a whole people” meant besides destroying the Xhosa’s subsistence infrastructure became clear in other reports. Already in the Sixth Frontier War, Captain Stretch noticed that British soldiers were not interested in taking prisoners. During one particularly memorable operation, sixty soldiers pursued a single Xhosa warrior into a patch of grass. Unable to discover him, they began burning the vegetation and advanced with their weapons ready to fire. “The poor creature was soon discovered in his hiding place,” Stretch noted, “and shot as a sportsman (or rather a poacher) would his game. This is British colonial warfare.”120 Moreover, the soldiers increasingly repaid (real and alleged) mutilations in kind. One soldiers recalled how the troops killed two Xhosa warriors who had fled into a river to hide from their pursuers. “The dead bodies were then dragged out of the water,” he recalled, “for the purpose of taking off their [word omitted; probably ears].”121 This was not an isolated case and even the corpse of the paramount chief Hintsa was mutilated by cutting off his chin and ears and hacking out some of his teeth.122

In the subsequent war, British soldiers also showed little interest in taking Xhosa prisoners. During one operation near the Cowie Bush, Bisset witnessed how the troops succeeded in trapping Xhosa warriors who had tried to escape the wrath of their enemy by hiding in ant holes and caves. “I am sorry to say,” Bisset later noted, “the men were so embittered against the enemy from the sight of their wounded companions, that they showed no mercy, and a promiscuous fire was poured into these places….”123 This was not an isolated incident but rather an accepted aspect of what came to be known as “savage warfare.” How else can one explain that, in the aftermath of the Battle of Gwanga in 1846, Bisset was able to report that “I have the satisfaction to say that I was the only person who took a prisoner….”124

During the Eighth Frontier War, the line between combatants and non-combatants became increasingly blurred. Besieged by Xhosa forces in Fort Cox in early 1851, Governor Smith appealed to all soldiers and settlers to “rise en masse…to destroy and exterminate these most barbarous and treacherous savages.”125 Apparently some soldiers interpreted Smith’s order literally. Upon taking command of a military expedition against the Xhosa, Eyre issued the order that “There was to be no quarter. All that were taken alive were to be hanged.”126 Alternatively, Eyre’s men shot their

120. Stretch, Journal, 10 June 1835, 91. Captain Henry Jervis experienced growing disgust with waging this type of warfare against the Xhosa in 1835. In a private conversation with Stretch, Jervis noted that “they [Xhosa prisoners] were allowed to depart, altho’ Lieutenant Sut-ton was surprised why I did not shoot [them]. But I found on lying down to rest myself a feeling of satisfaction I cannot describe.” See Stretch, Journal, 27 June 1835, 101.

121. Stretch, Journal, 15 June 1835, 93-4. 122. Stretch, Journal, 16 June 1835, 94; Peires, House of Phalo, 111.123. Bisset, Sport and War, 74. 124. Bisset, Sport and War, 91. 125. Reprinted in The Times, 7 March 1851. My emphasis.126. As quoted in Peires, The Dead Will Arise, 25.



prisoners and then hung the lifeless corpses from trees to serve as a warning to the enemy.127 In this climate, it is not unlikely that British soldiers also began to target non-combatants. This is especially true if one considers that the same British soldiers who fought the Xhosa massacred twenty-five women and children during a parallel operation against the neighboring Basotho Kingdom in 1852.128 Moreover, some soldiers even contemplated poisoning abandoned carcasses of bullocks in the expectation that the starving Xhosa would feed on them and die in the process.129 Although this last measure was apparently not implemented, few of the soldiers who left records of the frontier wars experienced qualms about the no-holds-barred approach to fighting the Xhosa. Writing to his mother, one soldier explained that “I could feel no compunction…my dear Mother in shooting a [Xhosa] and yet I could not shoot a dog without feeling some pity….”130 Indeed, most of the soldiers rationalized these wartime excesses with the metaphor of the merciless barbarian, arguing that the Xhosa’s barbarous mode of warfare forced the British soldiers to adopt these “sufficiently revolting” tactics.131

Was the Xhosa way of war really more barbarous and less civilized than European warfare? It is important to keep in mind that contemporary European military theorists, such as Denis Davydov and J. F. A. Le Mière de Corvey, fully condoned the use of guerrilla warfare against a superior enemy army.132 “If you want to fight this sort of [guerrilla] war successfully,” Corvey noted in 1823, “you must begin by seizing the mountain gorges. It can also be fought successfully in well-covered country of defiles, woods, forests, hedges, and so forth. But never adventure into the flat country, especially when the enemy has plenty of cavalry….”133 Moreover, the adoption of guerrilla tactics was a rational choice for the Xhosa given the British superiority in terms of firepower and cavalry. Time and time again the Xhosa had suffered defeats when opposing British forces on a conventional battlefield, such as in the Battle of Grahamstown in 1819 or the Battle of Gwanga in 1846.134 Thus, although the Xhosa had never read Corvey’s treatise, out of necessity they adopted the same tactics when fighting against the British colonial army. Moreover, while the images of death and destruction that accompanied these tactics certainly traumatized British soldiers, there is no evidence that these tactics were more

127. As quoted in Peires, Dead Will Arise, 26.128. Journal of W. J. St. John, National Army Museum, 23 December 1852. 129. McKay, Reminiscences, 145-146.130. Lancer Elwes to mother, 11 February 1852, as quoted in Peires, The Dead Will Arise,

24. 131. Wellesley, Letters, Wellesley to his brother, 15 February 1852, 74. See also Anonymous,

“Journal of an Officer serving in Kaffirland,” 24.132. Walter Laqueur, ed.,The Guerrilla Reader: A Historical Anthology (Philadelphia: Temple

University Press, 1977), 53-57; and J. F. A. Le Mière de Corvey, Des partisans et des corps irrégu-liers (Paris: Anselin et Pochard, 1823).

133. Corvey, Des partisans, as quoted in Gérard Chaliand, ed., The Art of War in World His-tory: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 662.

134. Milton, The Edges of War, 69-73, 164-5; Bisset, Sport and War, 88-98.

JOCHEN S. ARNDT


135. Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Art of War in the Age of Napoleon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 118-120.

136. Emeric de Vattel, The Law of Nations; or Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, 2 vols. (London: Printed for J. Newberry, 1760), Book III, 26, 49-56; Georg Friedrich Martens, Précis du droit des gens modernes de l ’Europe, 2 vols. (Paris: J. P. Aillaud, 1831 [1789]), Vol. 2, 180-181, 390; and Archer Polson and Thomas Hartwell Horne, Principles of the Law of Nations (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1860 [1848]), 44.

137. For the 16,000 dead, see Peires, The Dead Will Arise, 28; and T. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, 234. If one accepts Peires’s estimate of 100,000 for the total Xhosa population in 1850, this loss would produce a death rate of 16%. See Peires, House of Phalo, 3.

138. See the assessment of two contemporary witnesses: Charles Brownlee to John Ma-clean, 12 October 1852, and Robinson to mother, n. d. October 1852, as quoted in Crais, White Supremacy, 197.

barbarous than the guerrilla and counter-guerrilla tactics that had been practiced by the Vendeans, the Spaniards, and the French during the French Revolutionary Wars.135 All this suggests that there was also a self-serving element in the British outrage over the Xhosa mode of warfare. Indeed, given that European jurists argued strongly against the indiscriminate destruction of property and the killing of non-combatants among civilized nations, the metaphor of the merciless barbarian was useful because it seemingly “justified” the adoption of unlimited warfare against the “uncivilized” Xhosa population.136

While it is difficult to gauge the long-term impact of the British Army’s unlimited war against the Xhosa polities west of the Kei River, it certainly was detrimental in many regards. For one, it produced a “lost generation” among the Xhosa. In the Eighth Frontier War alone the Xhosa dead amounted to some 16,000—sixteen percent of the total population.137 In addition, the systematic destruction of crops, cattle, and homesteads caused impoverishment, famine, and additional social turmoil.138 Moreover, the combined effects of death and devastation eventually forced the Xhosa to surrender. And surrendering came, as mentioned above, with the harsh peace conditions that permanently changed the political and social organization of the Xhosa polities west of the Kei River.

ConclusionBetween 1834 and 1853 the British colonial army engaged in three openly

declared wars with the Xhosa. This essay argues that these violent encounters fostered a military knowledge system of the Xhosa that stereotyped them as treacherous savages and merciless barbarians. Furthermore, this essay contends that these negative characterizations allowed British soldiers to engage in unlimited warfare against the Xhosa and impose postwar policies of subjugation and dispossession on them. Because these two stereotypes had significant influence on British wartime and postwar policies toward the Xhosa, the processes through which they were created deserve more attention. This essay contends that for British soldiers the violence of frontier warfare had a crucial effect on the process of knowledge creation. In fact, the increasing duration, intensity, and indecisiveness



of the wars both created and reinforced these stereotypes between 1834 and 1853. Thus, despite alternative voices that characterized the Xhosa as victims and a martial race, the metaphors of the treacherous savage and the merciless barbarian came to dominate the British military knowledge system of the Xhosa between 1834 and 1853. The effects of these stereotypes on the British conduct of the war are also important. This essay contends that these stereotypes justified policies of dispossession and subjugation in the name of colonial security, and allowed British soldiers to conduct unlimited warfare, bringing an unprecedented level of death and destruction to the Xhosa polities. In this regard, the British military knowledge system of the Xhosa casts long shadows of violence and distrust over the history of South Africa.

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