Description
Book SynopsisA detailed history explaining how and why, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, Africans from the British colony of Natal transformed their ethnic self-identification, constructing and claiming a new Zulu identity.
Trade Review“Mahoney plunges straight to the heart of the pulsing academic debate over the problematic origins of Zulu ethnicity. His important study will certainly assume its well-merited place in the literature. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” - J. P. Laband,
Choice“This is a rich and thought-provoking study. The Other Zulus is an important contribution, not only to the social history of Natal and South Africa but to our understanding of the development of ethnic identities in colonial Africa and globally.” - Sara C. Jorgensen,
African Studies Quarterly"Michael R. Mahoney's synthetic history of how Natal Africans became Zulu is bold and provocative. It is bound to spur debate and discussion of an issue that is at once historically important and vitally relevant in the present."—
Paul La Hausse, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge
“Mahoney plunges straight to the heart of the pulsing academic debate over the problematic origins of Zulu ethnicity. His important study will certainly assume its well-merited place in the literature. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” -- J. P. Laband * Choice *
“…this is a work that historians of Southern Africa must wrestle with, and one that suggests new paths of research for the future.” -- Robert J. Houle * Canadian Journal of History *
"In this work, Michael R. Mahoney provides a keen examination of Zulu ethnicity during the crucial formative phases of the precolonial and colonial periods." -- Aran Mackinnon * The Historian *
“This is a rich and thought-provoking study.
The Other Zulus is an important contribution, not only to the social history of Natal and South Africa but to our understanding of the development of ethnic identities in colonial Africa and globally.” -- Sara C. Jorgensen * African Studies Quarterly *
“Michael Mahoney’s
The Other Zulus: The spread of Zulu ethnicity in colonial South Africa is an ambitious yet careful study of the development of an overarching Zulu ethnic identity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries….[H]istorians of southern Africa and Natal... will nonetheless likely find his approach refreshing and his argumentation a productive challenge. Mahoney’s book, although based in meticulously gathered Natal and Zulu sources, has real generalized appeal for the scholar of colonialism more broadly, and would be a very useful text to assign for graduate students. Mahoney’s work is of immense interest to scholars of settler colonialism, particularly those seeking a valuable example of uncovering Indigenous motivation and articulation from the pages of imperial source material.” -- T. J. Tallie * Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Maps xii
Introduction 1
1. The Failure of Zulu Ethnic Integration in the Precolonial Zulu Kingdom 21
2. A Zulu King Too Strong to Love, a Colonial State Too Weak to Hate, 1838–1879 47
3. Increasing Conflict among Natal Africans, 1879–1906 83
4. The Role of Migrant Labor in the Spread of Zulu Ethnicity, 1886–1906 117
5. Natal Africans' Turn to Dinuzulu, 1898–1905 150
6. The Poll Tax Protests and Rebellion, 1905–1906 182
Epilogue 217
Notes 225
Bibliography 261
Index 277
