‘The Fairy’ – as he called Victoria – ‘is in ecstasies,’ boasted Disraeli. A year later, he consolidated the Raj by making her ‘Empress of India’ whose border he was then forced to defend. Empire is always a charade of power, a confidence trick, pulled off with the mystique of hegemony that can only be sustained by the threat of swift force. But the European powers – Portuguese, Dutch, British – were small nations that particularly needed the empire bluff to control far-flung colonies and vast populations. Yet empire was expensive. Armies and infrastructure soon ate the profits, and it was hard to avoid the imperial vortex: each new conquest required more war to hold what you had and then further annexations to deny prizes to your rivals. Disraeli bought the Canal to keep out France, but Russia was Britain’s chief enemy, the Romanovs the most successful empire builders since Genghis. In 1865 Russia took Tashkent, in 1868 Samarkand, while the amirs of Bukhara and the khans of Khiva became vassal rulers. After an astonishing ten-year advance, Alexander II had reached the Afghan border. Prevented by Britain from taking Constantinople, Alexander discussed an Indian invasion with his generals.
As the Romanovs nervously probed the Afghan amir Sher Ali and the British demanded proof of his loyalty, he swung between fraught insecurity and proud defiance. When he refused British demands, Disraeli agreed to an invasion, which, better planned and armed than that of 1839, took Kabul and installed Sher Ali’s son with a British plenipotentiary to guide him. Meanwhile the prime minister faced disaster in Africa.
In January 1879, Cetshwayo,
The war was not the first to be provoked by Lord Carnavon, the colonial secretary in London, who after making Canada a self-governing dominion hoped to erect a similar structure in South Africa, ruled by the white settlers. But South Africa was not Canada: the Zulus, Xhosas and white Afrikaners had no intention of cooperating. The arrogant demands of the high commissioner Bartle Frere soon drove the Xhosas into rebellion. After crushing them, he turned on Cetshwayo, ‘a man of considerable ability, much force of character, a dignified manner, sagacity’. As Cetshwayo retrained his armies, Frere demanded he give up territory and reduce his forces. The
British aggression reflected the new stakes in South Africa. Eight years earlier, near the Vaal River, north-east of Cape Town, prospectors had found diamonds on the farm of the de Beer brothers in Griqualand, home of the mixed-race Griquas, who were ruled by their hereditary
In January 1879, Frere sent in 18,000 men under General Lord Chelmsford, who led one column of 1,500 himself. Cetshwayo targeted Chelmsford with 24,000 fighters under his brother: ‘March slowly, attack at dawn, eat up the red soldiers.’ The overconfident Chelmsford established his column at Isandlwana without a fortified camp, convinced that his 1,000 British redcoats and 500 African auxiliaries with their Martini–Henry rifles would easily overpower the Zulus. He was absent on a surveillance mission when the Zulus ambushed his troops, killing 1,210 soldiers – 739 white and 471 Africans, all with their stomachs ripped out – though losing a similar number themselves. Later Zulu troops besieged a British unit at Rorke’s Drift that managed to hold out for twelve hours. In March, at Intombe, Cetshwayo destroyed a British column, killing eighty; but a rash assault on a fortified camp, although it killed eighty-four Britons and a hundred Africans, cost him 2,000 Zulus. In London, Disraeli was furious, but Chelmsford redeemed himself by reinvading with 25,000 men, armed with a new weapon: the Gatling gun.*
