The Man Who Would be Inkosi: Civilising Missions in Shepstone's Early Career

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Periodical article

Title:	The Man Who Would be Inkosi: Civilising Missions in Shepstone's Early Career
Author:	McClendon, Thomas
Year:	2004
Periodical:	Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:	30
Issue:	2
Period:	June
Pages:	339-358
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	South Africa Natal Great Britain
Subjects:	colonialism biographies (form) History and Exploration Religion and Witchcraft
About person:	Theophilus Shepstone (1817-1893)
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/4133839
Abstract:	African historiography looks to Theophilus Shepstone as the architect of a 'system' that presaged twentieth-century styles of indirect rule in Africa. But Shepstone's ideas did not develop in a vacuum or emerge as a ready-made blueprint. This article examines how his methods developed in the interplay among various colonial and African allies and rivals, all operating in the context of rapidly changing local and imperial environments in the 1840s and 1850s. It focuses on his 1854 proposal to lead a substantial portion of Natal's Africans to a new promised land where he would rule. The proposal reflects Shepstone's origins as a child of frontier missionaries and protégé of an imperial officer. The article argues that Shepstone's ideas at this stage of his career emerged from a fusion of State and missionary versions of the civilizing mission. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]