Treacherous Savages & Merciless Barbarians: Knowledge, Discourse and Violence during the Cape Frontier Wars, 1834 -1853

Between 1834 and 1853 the British colonial army fought three wars with the Xhosa peoples who resided on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony of South Africa. Based on the published and unpublished diaries, journals, correspondence, and memoirs of British soldiers who served in these wars, this paper examines how these wartime experiences led to the creation of a military knowledge system of the Xhosa that stereotyped them as treacherous savages and merciless barbarians. Further, this essay argues that these stereotypes played a crucial role in the conquest of the Xhosa by justifying policies of dispossession and subjugation in the name of colonial security, and allowing British soldiers to conduct unlimited warfare against them. In this regard, the British military knowledge system of the Xhosa casts long shadows of violence and distrust over the history of South Africa.