Novu
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 165
They weren't conquered earlier because:
A) The New World had gold, spices, cocoa, prosperous farming soil, stuff that Europe wanted so they conquered it first where as Africa's only had the slave trade that Europe wanted.
B) the Zulu tribe was completely insignificant in the wider view of Africa until 1816 when the Kingdom was actually founded
C) have you read about the Anglo-Zulu War? They had 3-6x times the casualty rates in every battle they fought in, even the ones that they won.
I still fundamentally disagree that the Impi could not stand up to early gun powder units such as Musketmen, Musketeers, and Conquistadors. Rifemen and Gattling Guns is another story.
A) The European powers thought it was easier to fight each other over territory than fight the tribes in South Africa. Darkest Africa as it was called back then was believed to be unconquerable. Renaissance era European maps even had warnings over this part of Africa saying: "Here be dragons."
B) There was a larger Zulu culture that existed before the founding of the Zulu Kingdom. Their culture is thousands of years old and is the reason why Zulu were included in BNW.
C) The Zulu had lots of causalities because of the tactics they used which included charging into enemy fire. If Impi closed the distance to melee then the gun powder unit would get slaughtered. Casualty rates are somewhat non-important in real warfare. Who was it that famously said "for every 10 of my troops you kill I will kill one of your troops and still win the war?" The Zulu only lost the war because they were fighting against Gattlings and high powered industrial rifles. The honest historian understands the difference between industrial warfare of the late 19th century and the crude muskets used in the time of Henry VIII.
There is high degree of historical accuracy in BNW with the Zulu Impi being able to dominate Musketeers but are then defeated by riflemen and Gattling guns.