The Historiographical Development of the Concept “mfecane” and ...

history’. 63 Consequently, liberals expended virtually no energy on critically
researching the mfecane period, but accepted the mfecane narrative of Theal,
Cory and Walker, Bryant and Stuart, Ellenberger, Whiteside and others, and
presented it in a compressed and deracialized form. 64 The notable exception
was Macmillan, 65 who was the first historian, and for a long time also the only
one, to suspect that the mfecane wars were linked with European colonial
expansion. In particular he ‘strongly suspected that the slave trade to
Mozambique had much to do with disruptions in what became the Zululand
region, the highveld and even the eastern Cape frontier’, according to
Etherington. 66
A self-conscious Afrikaner historiography was developed first by amateurs at
the beginning of the century and then by professional historians at Afrikaans
Universities. According to Wright, their writings until the 1970’s focused
‘overwhelmingly on the history of Dutch-Afrikaner societies from the Great Trek
to the South African war of 1899-1902’. 67 Following the settler approach to
African history, they only dealt with the African past when it impinged on Cape
Dutch or Voortrekker history, and when dealing with mfecane history followed
63 Wright, ‘Political Mythology', 282. Saunders, ‘Pre-Cobbing Mfecane', 26-27. K. Smith, The
Changing Past: Trends in South African Historical Writing (Cape Town, 1988), 103.
64 Wright, ‘Political Mythology', 103-04. See for example E. Walker, A Modern History for South
Africans (London, 1926). J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The Native Policy of the Voortrekkers (Cape
Town, 1928). A.F. Hattersley, More Annals of Natal (London, 1936). M.H. De Kock, The
Economic Development of South Africa (London, 1936). C.W. De Kiewiet, A History of South
Africa: Social and Economic (London, 1941).
65 W.M. Macmillan, The South African Agrarian Problem and Its Historical Development
(Johannesburg, 1919). W.M. Macmillan, Land, the Native and Unemployment (Johannesburg,
1924). W.M. Macmillan, The Cape Colour Question (London, 1927), W.M. Macmillan, Bantu,
Boer and Briton: The Making of the South African Native Problem (London, 1929). W.M.
Macmillan, Complex South Africa (London, 1930). W.M. Macmillan, Warning from the West
Indies (Harmondsworth, 1938).
66 N. Etherington, 'Putting the Mfecane Controversy into Historiographical Context', in Hamilton
(ed), Mfecane Aftermath, 14. Wright, ‘Political Mythology', 280-83. J. Wright, 'Beyond the
Concept of the ''Zulu Explosion''', in Hamilton (ed), Mfecane Aftermath, 120-21. Saunders, ‘Pre-
Cobbing Mfecane', 26.
67 Wright, ‘Political Mythology', 280-83.
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