Friday, August 15, 2014

Axe, War of the (1846–1847)

PRINCIPAL COMBATANTS: British colonists of South Africa
vs. the Xhosa tribes

PRINCIPAL THEATER(S): Vicinity of the Great Kei River in
South Africa

DECLARATION: No formal declaration

MAJOR ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES: Part of a century-long
conflict between the Xhosa people and white settlers

OUTCOME: The Xhosa were driven from their homelands
when the English Crown annexed contested lands.

APPROXIMATE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MEN UNDER ARMS:
Unknown

CASUALTIES: Unknown

TREATIES: None

As British colonists and Dutch Boers settled more and
more of South Africa, they began to encroach on the
Xhosa people, who were increasingly hard pressed by
unremitting famine and drought. The Xhosa responded by
harassing the colonists, principally by cattle theft and
raids on trading posts.
In 1846 British authorities dispatched a small number
of troops to patrol “Kaffirland”—the Xhosa were derisively
called Kaffirs by the British—after a Xhosa tribesman had
escaped from detention at Fort Beaufort. He was being held
for having allegedly stolen an axe. The troops demanded
that the Xhosa give up the escaped detainee, and when
they refused a war erupted. For just under two years, the
Xhosa harried the frontier of British and Boer settlement.
There were no formal “set” battles in the War of the Axe,
but British troops unrelentingly policed the region until
the Xhosa were driven not only from the frontier but out of
their homeland entirely. The region vacated was annexed
by the British Crown.

See also BOERWAR, FIRST; BOERWAR, SECOND (GREAT);
BOER-ZULUWAR.

Further reading: Noel Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic
of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa
People (New York: Knopf, 1992); J. B. Peires, House of
Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their
Independence (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1982).

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