Word: shaka
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1965-1965
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...WASHING OF THE SPEARS, by Donald R. Morris. This massive history of the Zulu nation highlights two chieftains: Shaka, whose wars of conquest depopulated much of southern Africa, allowing the Boers and British to move in, and his grandson Cetshwayo, who won many battles against British armies of the 1880s but lost the war and the land...
Zulu power had begun to consolidate some 60 years before Isandhlwana under a rapacious and cruel tribal chieftain, who was called Shaka after his unseemly birth.* Viewing South Africa's teeming, disputatious tribes, Shaka had a vision of the strength that unity could bring, and he set out in 1817 to unify by conquest. Within a year, his modest impi of 350 warriors had swollen to 2,000. In ten years, an army of 50,000 enforced Shaka's will over a domain the size of Nevada...
Changed Color. Not even unconquered tribes dared to oppose a man whose executioners would cut open 100 pregnant women to satisfy their ruler's transient interest in embryology, whose fierce regiments would slaughter each other unless quartered in widely separated kraals. Toward the white man, however, Shaka assumed a friendly mien. The first British pioneers to set foot in Zululand met with a truly stunning cordiality. Executions were held in their honor. Shaka signed peace pacts with his guests, ceded them his kingdom (he had no intention of delivering), asked little more in return than a supply of Rowland...
...live long enough to find out. In 1828, covetous relatives dethroned Shaka by the usual method-murder. Over the next 50 years, successive assassinations eventually lodged a grandson, Cetshwayo, in the royal kraal at Ulundi. Fate and the British decreed that this gentle bull of a man would preside over the nation's death...