*Zulus chanting* You think our men can do better than that, Owen?

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It's quite amazing how badly the Zulus fucked up at Rorke's Drift

If they'd sent their entire force they could've easily overrun the position and staged a counterinvasion of Natal, basically ensuring the British would leave them alone for good

If they'd left it alone as their King had ordered them to then the British might've been demoralised enough to not stage a second invasion and Cetshwayo could have started peace negotiations

But the worst possible thing happened and Dabulamanzi kaMpande went full retard and attacked it by himself

>>2558037
IIRC they weren't even supposed to attack the place, they just stumbled into it and decided to attack. But what I'm really wondering is, how did the British fucked up so badly at Iswanda?

>>2558180
Encirclement, no ammunition and being outnumbered 10 to 1 due to poor leadership.

>>2558195
But they had cavalry, artillery and Gatling guns at Iswanda and still lost. At Rorke's Drift they were also outnumbered and only had Martini-Henry rifles but they won, how come?

>>2558243
Twenty men with spears attack a man with a gun. (don't care to look up what the total odds are eat me)

They could easily overwhelm the gunman if they came at him all at once.

They come at him one or two at a time, and some guys don't even bother coming and go to a gas station to jerk off in the bathroom instead of helping.

That's how in a nutshell.

>>2558243
Because encirclement and lack of supplies. Also The Zulus had genuinely good tactics.

>>2558243
The brits were caught unawares at Islawanda. Many of their heavy weapons were in the baggage train, and their troops were resting at camp.

The brits/boers at Rorke's Drift had time to barricade themselves and evacuate all non-fighters before they were encircled.

>>2558195
The "no ammunition" thing is a myth perpetuated by the film Zulu Dawn.
Forensics experts have actually found many barrels of rifles there warped from overuse.

Meaning the firing lines were unloading more ammo than their rifles could take, and yet the impis came on.

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>>2558037
>ensuring the British would leave them alone for good

You're not very knowledgeable when it comes to the Eternal Anglo, are you?....

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>>2558037
>and staged a counterinvasion of Natal
That would have only played into the pro-war faction's hands.

Sacking Natal would galvanize Britain into a total invasion.

What Cetshwayo did was arguably the best course he could have undertaken.

Had he overlooked the main camp at Isandlwana and instead wiped out Lord Chelmsford's scout force, killing or capturing Chelmsford himself, the defeat might have embarrassed the pro-war faction enough to be the end of it.
Kill 800 British regulars didn't really help things.

>>2558376
They would have trumped up an arbitrary reason to go to war. That's their schtick in Africa in particular Southern Africa. The whole point is that your ass gets raped regardless of what you do cooperative or not.

Not singling out the UK for this just stating an obvious

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Since this seems related, is there any way the Zulu could've retained some form of independence or would the British fuck their shit one way or another? Also what would it look like if Shaka didn't lose his shit when his mother died?

>>2558494
>would the British fuck their shit one way or another?


most definitely. See the Second Anglo-Boer war.

>>2558494
Spitballing here but if the Boers and Zulu had cooperated (fat chance) against us they might have been able to achieve some little win.

But really no, short of total cooperation (puppet government) there was no stopping the empire.

>>2558376
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Expedition_to_Abyssinia

>Ethiopian emperor is trying to re-unify the country in the midst of a giant civil war
>he's obsessed with cannons
>tries to cultivate a good relationship with Britain to get access to cannons
>random British missionary is wandering about
>writes a book saying that the emperor, Tewdoros, is not actually a descendant of Solomon but the son of a street food seller
>Tewdoros gets pissy and imprisons him and then several other missionaries and foreigners
>British send a consul and his family to negotiate with
>the emperor arrests them and hides them in a mountain fortress deep in the Ethiopian mountains
>sends letters to Queen Victoria demanding her assistance in making guns and cannons in exchange for the hostages
>gets the captives to use their techical knowledge to build a cannon
>he calls it "Sebastopol" after the Crimean War city
>Britain is angered by the seizure of a few captives
>builds an entirely new port and a massive railway all the way from the coast into the Ethiopian highlands
>spends £9 million pounds (in 1867 money) marching a 15,000 strong army through the middle of a brutal civil war with dozens of elephants
>hands a shit load of weapons to the man who would one day become the next Ethiopian emperor
>march 3 months through unforgiving mountains with no infrastructure
>launch a final punishing assault on Tewodoros' stronghold
>as they breach the gates the emperor shoot himself with a modern pistol he was gifted by Victoria
>the British soldiers loot the ancient churches and vaults and take many of their ancient Christian works of art back to be displayed in the British Museum in London

19th century empires had some balls.

>>2558508
well there might be some form of co-operation (or at least co-belligerence) if they survived the Anglo-Zulu war as the First Boer War was just a year away. And perhaps fighting both the Boer States (which did win the first war with the Brits) and the Zulu kingdom at the same would'be put too much strain on the empire and force the Brits to yield.

>>2558494
I feel like the Tswana had the right idea. Just invite the British over, let them poke around for a bit, teach you how to build some infrastructure, and let them go their merry way once they get bored. It's a win/win.

>>2558510
>19th century empires had some balls.
They didn't have SJWs, internet and netflix to distract them or slow them down.