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

accepted by later authors as part of the dominant discourse on the Fingo and
remains so to this day.
The main thrust of Godlonton’s work was that Africans were savage and warlike
people, making it imperative for the governments of the Cape and of England to
protect the whole eastern part of the colony. Had it not been for the brave
defence by the hardy settlers of the eastern Cape, their land, cattle and
possessions would have been in jeopardy. Thus all African actors and actions
had to be portrayed in as vicious a light as possible, and settlers, as well as
their actions, as heroic. Godlonton’s contribution to mfecane historiography was
the portrayal of the three African monsters destroying other chiefdoms inside
the “blank space”, leaving the Europeans at its edge to collect the refugees.
Though published in Grahamstown, these volumes were widely read in the
colony and in Europe, and for the rest of the nineteenth century were
considered the standard work on the war of 1834/5 and on the Fingo, and Theal
thought them ‘thoroughly reliable history’. 89
In 1836, the same year in which two of Godlonton’s volumes appeared, another
book, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, crucial to the development of
mfecane historiography, was published by Isaacs. 90 Of all the authors who
published books, Wylie regards Isaacs as the only Port Natal trader who was
‘… enveloped in a violently alien culture …’ from 1825-1831. 91 Isaacs was a 17-
year-old, under-educated youth with ties to the Solomon family, who were
merchants in St. Helena, Cape Town and London. In 1825 J.S. King, captaining
the Mary from London to Port Natal via Cape Town, stopped at St. Helena.
Isaacs, having worked there for three years for his uncle, travelled with King to
Port Natal where he became his junior partner and then inherited all his Port
Natal assets after King’s death in September 1828. In June 1830 he became
Fynn’s partner and finally left Natal in late January 1831. That same year he
89 G.M. Theal, Compendium of South African History and Geography (3rd. edition, Lovedale,
1877), iv, quoted in Peires, House of Phalo, 179.
90 Isaacs, Travels and Adventures, 2 Vols.
91 Wylie, 'Autobiography as Alibi’, 79.
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