SHAKA'S MILITARY EXPEDITIONS: SURVIVAL AND MORTALITY FROM SHAKA'S IMPIS
regiments and herds of raided cattle. The reports about the attacks made by Embo troops
under Zihlandlo and his brother Sambela reflect an endemic level of insecurity and disorder.
Zihlandlo attacked at least seventeen smaller chiefs, killed eleven of them, and confiscated
their cattle.123 Zihlandlo's brother Sambela became a famous fighter as a subordinate chief
to Zihlandlo and made at least fourteen attacks against neighboring chiefs, killing at least
twelve chiefs and capturing their cattle, before Shaka finally attacked and defeated them and
drove Zihlandlo into flight to the south.124
The Wages of War: Mortality and the "Death of Nations"
The use of terms like the "death of nations" reflected the seriousness of the political recon-
figuration resulting from the expansion of AmaZulu authority over regional chiefdoms, and
came to be confused with a presumption regarding the death of people and high mortality
from battles. Warfare was more brutal, and demographic disruptions caused widespread
misery and civilian mortality from famine and disease, but the numbers of warriors killed in
battles and the numbers of civilians killed in military campaigns during the era of Shaka's
rule has been grossly exaggerated in the historiography. The eyewitness testimony and sec-
ondhand oral traditions told to James Stuart came from men, and a few women, whose
social and political networks had been incorporated into the AmaZulu kingdom during
the course of the nineteenth century, but many were descendants of people who had been
victimized by AmaZulu troops in the process of incorporation. As a result there is consider-
able variation as well as independent confirmation with regard to testimony about violence
and atrocities that accompanied warfare, or occurred as random, terrorizing acts initiated by
Shaka or other chiefs. The stories of deaths of civilians as "collateral" victims during military
campaigns, and of both warriors and civilians as the result of ordered executions, as corrobo-
rated by independent European and African sources, are credible as general reports if not
always in their details.125 The sources agree that warfare had become more violent, and when
formal battles were fought hundreds rather than, as previously, only a handful of warriors
might be killed in the fighting before it ended with surrender or a rout. However, levels of
mortality tended to be exaggerated. Some famous campaigns did not result in major battles,
involving opposing regiments of warriors on the battlefield, such as the second AmaMpondo
campaign, because invading AmaZulu forces did not meet with significant resistance and
raided cattle rather than engaging in formal battles. Some military campaigns resulted in
negligible levels of casualties on both sides.
Understanding the processes involved in sociopolitical consolidation and levels of
mortality associated with Shaka's impis is critical for determining population numbers and
the demographic distribution of chiefdoms across the region as European settlement was
expanding in the 1820s and after. The failure to recognize the survival and dispersal and,
sometimes, reconstitution of chiefdoms and their populations following a rout or pre-

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