by AZAR GAT

The formation of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka in the early nineteenth century, in what was later known as Zululand and Natal in South Africa, is a popular case study of state emergence. For the Zulu state formation dates very late in terms of absolute time—the latest example that is examined here—and was therefore well recorded by Europeans who arrived shortly after the event. Nevertheless, it took place in a tribal/chiefly zone before serious contact with Europeans and with little outside influence. It thus constitutes an almost pristine case, located very early in relative time. Furthermore, this early state formation left virtually no archaeological markers, such as monumental construction. It can thus serve as an archetype of similar, presumed but unrecorded occurrences of early state formation of a predominantly military nature in the prehistoric agricultural tribal/chiefly zone. More generally, the Zulu case fully exhibits features that are familiar from many other known instances of state formation.

The Zulu state emerged within the realm of a single ethnic stock, or ethnos, the Nguni-speaking Bantu, who practised cattle raising and shifting agriculture. An ethnos is not a political entity. Until the late eighteenth century, the Nguni were divided among many, ‘politically’ separate chiefdoms that incorporated separate tribes and subtribes. Clans were the dominant social bodies, and chiefs’ retinues regularly numbered no more than a few dozen men. Violent struggles of inheritance within the chiefly families after the death of chiefs were commonplace. Frequent inter-chiefdom warfare took the familiar dual form of raids— mainly for cattle, the main property and measure of wealth—and of lowcasualty spear-throwing battles, neither involving more than a few hundred warriors on each side. The chiefdoms’ small kinship-based structure precluded wars of subjugation. However, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one chieftain, Dingiswayo, succeeded in breaking away from the power constraints of kinship, into formative kingship. By force of arms coupled with moderation, he gradually extended overlordship over other chiefdoms, retaining their ruling clans in place but often substituting the former chief with a junior member of the same clan, who thus owed him his position. He also dismantled the old clan-based militia, establishing in its place permanent age-grade units from mixed localities with appointed officers at their heads. These supra-tribal warrior units, kept on the spoils of war, in turn formed the basis for further conquests and power accumulation. Some 30 different tribes came under Dingiswayo’s overlordship. Although warfare paved the way for this expanding realm, domestic peace was proclaimed within it, with the supreme ruler acting as high judge.

After Dingiswayo was killed in 1817, his nascent kingdom was fought for and taken over by one of his best military commanders, Shaka of the Zulu clan, which gave the new realm its name. Shaka continued with Dingiswayo’s methods, supplementing them only with proverbial cruelty and new battle tactics—the two elements being not entirely unrelated. He forced his warriors to substitute a new thrusting spear and close-in assaults for the traditional spear-throwing battles. The bloody, all-out battle, which we tend to identify with warfare in world history but which was in fact everywhere a novelty in the tribal zone, was thus initiated in Zululand, terrifying Shaka’s opponents. Hosts of refugees swept through southern Africa. Shaka’s armed force grew to several tens of thousand men, many of them permanently employed in raiding across the Zulu borders. They were posted in ‘barracks’ around the realm, away from their original tribes, so that they could not serve local tribal resistance. Shaka’s kingdom expanded to perhaps as much as 200,000 square kilometres—roughly the size of England—and its population numbered in the low hundred thousands. Among the means that Shaka used to consolidate his realm was the institution of communal rituals, associated with and presided over by himself, which supplemented the traditional family ancestral worship and village cults.

In 1828, Shaka’s reign of terror ended with his assassination by his halfbrother, who after his own reign of terror was deposed in 1840 by a still younger half-brother. This more moderate ruler, Mpande, continued to pursue the consolidation of the kingdom. He transformed tribal domains into state territorial administrative districts, and placed his many sons from polygynous marriages in important administrative positions. At the same time, he married his daughters to distinguished people and local chiefs, while marrying their daughters, thus further tightening the ruling kin network around the crown. An increasingly stronger sense of Zulu identity and unity was being forged and gradually coming into being. Meanwhile, other African states had emerged on the borders of the Zulu state, partly under its impact. Furthermore, from the mid-1830s the Afrikaner trek from the Cape to Natal had been taking place, leading to bloody encounters with the Zulu. Coexistence of a sort prevailed during Mpande’s reign, but not long after his death in 1872 the Zulu state came to the end of its independence as the British Empire established control over it. The fearsome Zulu mass charges were famously broken by western firepower.

A British official described the Zulu nation and state somewhat partially as ‘a collection of tribes, more or less autonomous, and more or less discontented; a rope of sand whose only cohesive property was furnished by the presence of the Zulu ruling family and its command of a standing army.’ Although there was a very substantial grain of truth in this, reality was more complex. As already mentioned, armed force was instrumental in generating all features of state formation that are encountered again and again: the expansion of nucleus state power by the combined coercion and co-optation of formerly independent chiefs within a system of overlordship; the harnessing of both kinship ties within the new pan-elite and supra-kin institutions to strengthen state rule; the assumption of supreme military, judicial, and religious authority by the overlord; and, over time, the welding of the realm into an increasingly unified state through increasing bureaucratization and processes of cultural fusion and common identity formation.

All these processes are also evident in the tribal states of east Africa (in today’s Uganda), another prime example of early state formation that is lit by historical and protohistorical sources while being sufficiently isolated. Europeans first arrived in the region in 1862, finding there the states of Buganda, Ankole, Bunyoro, and Toro. Although these states varied substantially in size and power, they all extended over tens of thousands of square kilometres and their populations numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Oral traditions and king lists—supported by archaeological evidence from royal graves and shrines—indicate state history in the region of some five centuries. Successive waves of pastoral immigrations from the north may have provided the states’ first ruling elites. State and empire building was carried out by emergent royal clans, coercing and co-opting local chiefs who were incorporated into the state structure. The chiefs collected taxes and gifts, maintaining a delicate balance within the royal court, a balance fostered by marriage ties, benefit allocation, and the prospect of promotion as state officials. The court camp itself, with its state officials and huge royal harem, was frequently moved from place to place. The divine and sacred king presided over elaborate state ritual. Youths from all over the realm were called up for training in the vicinity of the royal court and were garrisoned in the provinces under appointed officers. Local militias were called upon in time of war, which consisted of cattle raiding, tribute taking, conquest, and the transformation of neighbouring polities into dependent satellites. Murderous struggles for succession among a deceased king’s sons as well as other members of the royal clan were no less endemic. As with the Zulu, force was central to every aspect of state formation in east Africa. Force capability increased with size, growing in a positive feedback process with every further expansion. In addition, force increased through the centralization and regimentation of the tribal armed forces, which made these forces far more available and subject to control under much wider circumstances determined by the state.

It is mainly in these factors that the power advantage of states over tribal societies lay. Man to man, tribal warriors were more than a match for state conscripts, and many tribal lands—although not as densely populated as the state-civilization zone—could potentially produce a large number of fighting men. Still, tribal societies were of small scale, were divided among themselves, and possessed little coercive power over their members. Although emergencies and desperate situations such as enemy invasion or tribal migration could force a general participation in warfare, such concerted efforts were hard to sustain for long, and in other circumstances selfinterest and self-preservation encouraged ‘defection’ from the common effort. Among other things, states greatly reduced ‘cheating’ and worked to eliminate ‘free riders’ by coercing their members into co-operation, in either these members’ ‘genuine’ interest, thus relieving them from a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, or the ruler’s interest, or in any combination of the two.

LINK