The colonial, the imperial, and the creation of the 'European' in southern Africa
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Date
1994-05-23
Authors
Thornton, Robert
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Abstract
This paper examines the Zulu attempt to understand and to exploit the
imperial power of Queen Victoria relative to the colonial powers of Natal's
earliest colonists, missionaries, and administrators. The study reveals the
opening up, and exploitation of a distinction between the interests of the
" imperial", represented for the Zulu royalty by Queen Victoria in England.
and the "colonial" (or "Colonialist" -a term invented in mid nineteenth
century southern Africa) represented by the Shepstone administration in Natal
and the Cape Parliament in the Cape Colony. An attempt is made to sketch
the 19th century Zulu imagination of power in which the colonial, the
imperial, the missionary, the Zulu and the European or " Western"
(Occidental) types and sources of power could be comprehended and
manipulated. It amounted to the creation of the social category of "The
White" by southern African people who were simultaneously cast as "The
Black" or "The Natives" by people of European descent in southern Africa. It
also led to the creation of the characteristically South African politics which
seeks a moral arbitor and guarantee not in its own limited arena, but in the
world at large.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 23 May 1994
Keywords
Ethnicity. South Africa, Zululand (South Africa). History, KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa). History