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

illustrates, in part, the weddedness of historians to certain narrative modes and
methodological dispositions, that is to their literary antecedents’. 95
Subsequent to that conference, four significant publications appeared. Eldredge
and Morton’s edited volume, based on Cobbing’s 1988 article, dealt with the
enslavement of indigenous peoples in late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century South African history. In a chapter on the Transgariep Eldredge
reversed her earlier stance, based on evidence presented by Cobbing and
above all myself, and accepts now that slave raiding by mounted and armed
Griqua, Bastaard and Kora raiders was sufficiently formidable and extensive to
have been the cause of much of the dislocation reported in the greater Caledon
Valley area, the Free State and the Transvaal. 96 Hamilton’s Terrific Majesty,
published in 1998, was a ‘historical-political’ 97 work, which explores Zulu identity
through her study of the construction over time of the image of Shaka. Her main
innovation is her view of oral traditions. Wylie, who published his Ph.D. thesis
as Savage Delight in 2000, presented a post-modern, literary analysis of the
treatment of Shaka at the hands of white writers of the nineteenth and twentieth
century. 98 He brings out clearly that the production of the modern image of
Shaka is tied to both the literary devices employed in the texts, and also how
inconsistent and problematic these texts are. Wylie made it clear that, in order
to research mfecane history, texts have to be subjected to methodical
examinations just as oral history is. Etherington’s The Great Treks of 2001 99
takes a fresh look at both the mfecane and the Great Trek. He considers what
has hitherto been regarded as separate historical “events” as one southern
African history. He incorporates many aspects of the anti-mfecane critique but
his innovations are connected with a longer chronology which extends from
1815 to 1854. He postulates that large states existed in southern Africa at
various times before the early nineteenth century, that their structures were
95 Wylie , Savage Delight, 214.
96 F. Morton, 'Slavery and South African Historiography', in Eldredge et al., Slavery in South
Africa, 4-5. Cobbing, ‘Mfecane as Alibi'. For Richner see Footnote no. 14.
97 Wylie , Savage Delight, 8.
98 Ibid.
99 Etherington, Great Treks.
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