Graham Dominy, Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers – Fort Napier and the British Imperial Garrison

Abstract

In the Foreword to Andrew Duminy and Bill Guest’s Natal and Zululand: From Earliest
Times to 1910, published in 1989, the late Professor Colin Webb remarked, with
approbation, that exploration of Natal’s past continued vigorously. Graham Dominy’s
thorough account of the role of the garrison at Fort Napier exemplifies and
embellishes that practice. At the outset he makes a significant observation about the
strength of the garrison which has great relevance to the frugal way the British
maintained their empire: “The power of the garrison was less than it sought to
portray, but it was a token of the greater power of the empire, which could be
brought into play if locally challenged” (p xvi). As such, the garrison symbolised
British hegemony and promoted a sense of security amongst the small settler
population. But as Dominy also notes, “the garrison masked the weaknesses of the
state through military pageantry and marched out on minor expeditions in response
to panic and rumours of invasion” (p 58). Although he does not make this point, the
extent to which settlers were consistently aware of their vulnerability was their
involvement in the rifle associations. No other civic organisation was as prolific.
Initiated by Ordinance 11 of 1855, by 1904 there were 62 Volunteer Corps or rifle
associations, as they were then called.1