Book reviews/Boekbesprekings

Although the Anglo-Zulu War was fought over 120 years ago, there seems no end in sight to the proliferation of books on a]l aspects of the struggle. Even now at the turn of the century, when interest should logically be concentrated more on the South African War, books, both scholarly and popular, continue to appear. A glance at a recent catalogue shows entries for almost as many books wri t ten in 1999 on the Anglo-Zulu as on the South African War. With the military aspects of the war continuing to dominate public interest it is understandable that mos t books dealing with the Zulu concentrate on battles. Yet, over the years there has also been a steady s t ream of studies examining the outbreak of the war, its conduct and repercussions on the Zulu, and its long-term impact on the kingdom and society. Strangely, however, a detailed scholarly work concentrating solely on the causes of the war, longt e rm as well as shor t t e rm, has not appeared. Instead s tudents of the war have had to rely on chapters in books on Natal and Zululand or specifically on the war , on general works such as J o h n Laband's Rope o f Sand: the rise and fa l l o f the Zulu kingdom in the nineteenth century (Johannesburg, 1995) or on unpublished theses, such as Phil Kennedy's doctoral study, 'The fatal diplomacy: Sir Theophilus Shepstone and the Zulu kings, 1839-1879' (Ph D, UCLA, 1976). In 1962 Richard Cope, a young postgraduate s tudent at the Universi ty of Natal, was encouraged by Edgar Brookes to remedy, this lacuna. He completed a Mas te r ' s d isser ta t ion which sought to examine the causes of the war in the context of the relationship between Shepstone and Cetshwayo. Nearly 40 years later this early research has resulted, via a University of the Witwatersrand doctoral thesis, in a profoundly scholarly examination of the intricate and interlinked developments in sou thern Africa which led inexorably to war . His book provides abundant evidence of a most thorough, indeed exhaustive, s tudy of the documentary sources relating to the war and its background. Dr Cope would be the first to agree that this is a solid empirical study. He remains essentially an historian of the old school, and this is not meant disparagingly, and readers of Ploughshare o f war can rest confident that he has provided them with a clear, dispassionate discussion of the unravelling of events in the 1870s. While he takes note of the importance of economic and other factors in the events leading to January 1878 and of the developments within the Zulu kingdom, the work is essentially a study in the relationships between people from very different cultures and ideologies. Central to this book as it was to the original dissertation is the relationship between Shepstone and Cetshwayo. Sheps tone ' s role dated back to the virtual beginnings of the imperial presence in the colony of Natal and in the second chapter Dr Cope sets the scene with an account of the origins of the 'Shepstone System' in the region. This is followed by an analysis of the politics of the Zulu kingdom before the civil war of 1856 elevated Cetshwayo to a position of power. The res t of the chapter examines the provenance of the Zulu border dispute with the Transvaal