The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (55 page)

Kamehameha’s Kingdom

Kamehameha now found himself in charge of a territory that was too large to be administered like a chiefdom. Paramount chiefs on the Big Island, as we have seen, had traditionally moved from district to district during the year. These moves distributed the burden of support among all the chief’s subjects while making him intimately familiar with each district.

Frequent rebellions against past chiefs, however, show us that it was not always easy to control the 4,028-square-mile Big Island. Now Kamehameha needed to control an archipelago 1,500 miles long, with 6,423 square miles of dry land and big stretches of ocean. He would have to appoint a governor for each island, someone loyal to him rather than to the natives of the island. He sent his favorite wife’s father, a native of Ka’u on the Big Island, to be governor of Maui. And when Kamehameha went to war, he often left
John
Young in charge of his home district.

It is significant that the archipelago now had a political hierarchy of four administrative levels. In olden days each island had been ruled by a paramount chief (Level 1), below whom there were subchiefs (Level 2), who in turn supervised minor nobles (Level 3). Now Kamehameha was all alone in Level 1; the governors of each island occupied Level 2; the subchiefs occupied Level 3; and minor nobles occupied Level 4.

Ali’i-ai-moku was no longer an adequate title for Kamehameha. If his unification of Hawai’i had occurred in the absence of Euro-American visitors, he might have created a new Hawai’ian term for his office. Owing to his extensive contact with English speakers, however, he decided to call himself King Kamehameha I.

We have described the unification of Hawai’i at length for a reason: even though Polynesian in its details, it is an example of a widespread process by which monarchies were created from smaller-scale societies. We use the term “process” because it often took a succession of leaders to complete the transition. Rarely were the efforts of one ruler sufficient. In the case of Hawai’i important roles were played by ‘Umi, Alapai, Kalaniopu’u, and Kamehameha. Opinions differ on the exact moment in this sequence when a kingdom existed. As we shall see later, similar disagreements apply to the rise of monarchy on the coast of Peru.

We also will see, in this and later chapters, that among the Zulu of southern Africa, the Asante of west Africa, the Merina of Madagascar, and the Hunza of the Pakistani-Kashmir borderlands, indigenous kingdoms arose in the context of elite rivalry. For a substantial period of time—centuries, in some cases—a series of rival rank societies competed with one other. Despite moments of political unification, the long-term outcome was a stalemate. Eventually the aggressive leader of one rank society (often a highly motivated usurper) gained an unforeseen advantage over his neighbors. He pressed his advantage relentlessly until he had subdued all his rivals. He turned their chiefdoms into the provinces of a society larger than any previously seen in the region. To consolidate power, he broke down the old loyalties of each province and replaced them with an ideology stressing loyalty to him. He rewarded priests who were willing to verify his genealogical credentials and revise his group’s cosmology, ensuring his divine right to rule.

While his rise to power may have been brutal, the new king then cultivated an image of beneficence. Kamehameha, for example, decided that his rule would emphasize peace and prosperity. He encouraged his people to intensify agriculture and tried to serve as a role model by working publicly in his own gardens.

Kamehameha died in 1819, leaving his kingdom to Liholiho, the son of his most highly ranked wife, Keopuolani of Maui. Kamehameha’s remains were hidden in an undisclosed location, reportedly a cave visible only from the sea. From such a burial site, his mana would continue to draw schools of fish to the coast.

Because of Liholiho’s youth, his mother was made regent to ensure an orderly succession. One of the most dramatic changes in Hawai’ian social logic is attributed to Liholiho but may well have been his mother’s idea.

In many hierarchical societies the ruler symbolized order in a world plagued by disorder. Hawai’i was no exception. The inauguration of each new ruler was preceded by a period of deliberate chaos, during which his subjects violated all ritual taboos. It was, among other things, taboo for men and women to dine together. After sufficient time had elapsed, the new ruler would appear and restore order, reinstating all taboos.

At the appropriate moment, Prince Liholiho appeared. At a feast sponsored by his mother, however, he defied the taboo and dined with the women. By this and other acts, according to scholars such as Ralph Kuykendall and William Davenport, Liholiho separated rank from religious protocol and made Hawai’i a more secular kingdom.

THE UNIFICATION OF THE ZULU

In our discussion of the Bemba we mentioned Africa’s Bantu migration, the dispersal of ironworking farmers and herders from their homeland north of the Congo. Some 1,700 years ago these people had spread south to the Limpopo River, on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. By
A.D.
800 they had crossed the Limpopo and entered the acacia grasslands of the south. There they found an environment suitable for cattle herding, one where the tsetse fly was less of a problem.

We believe that these migrating Iron Age societies already had a degree of hereditary inequality. Among the Bantu speakers crossing the Limpopo were the ancestors of the Zulu people. They spread into the grassland of eastern South Africa, a province called Natal by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. Because the early Zulu were a clan-based society with chiefs and warriors, they had little difficulty displacing the hunters and gatherers whose ancestors had occupied Natal for millennia.

By the late Iron Age (
A.D.
800–1200), according to archaeologist Tim Maggs, the societies of Natal had become greater in scale and complexity, with many settlements moving to defensible hilltop localities. There is evidence, in other words, for ongoing competition among chiefly societies, not unlike the competition we saw in protohistoric Hawai’i. By the late eighteenth century, a period for which European colonists left us written texts, there may have been as many as 50 different rank societies in Natal. Perhaps the most powerful, according to historians
John
Wright and Carolyn Hamilton, were the chiefly societies known as the Mabhudu, the Ndwandwe, and Mthethwa. Their neighbors, the Zulu, were a smaller and less imposing rank society.

The average Zulu settlement was a farmstead built by a senior man with multiple wives. Each wife and her children occupied a beehive-shaped hut; all huts were set in a protective circle around the corral where the cattle spent the night. The entire farmstead was further enclosed by a stockade. While the men herded cattle, the women raised millet, sorghum, and melons. We know these farmsteads not by their Zulu name but by the Afrikaans word
kraal.

The rise of the Zulu has been reconstructed from oral histories, European eyewitness accounts, and anthropological research. According to anthropologist Max Gluckman, the families of many kraals were united into clans that reckoned descent in the father’s line. Multiple clans were united under a chief, who was the hereditary leader of the most senior descent group. Chiefs ruled by dividing their territory into sections. Each section was commanded by one of the chief’s brothers or half brothers, who served as a subchief.

Quarreling among sections was common and usually ended with one brother declaring his independence and moving his subjects to a new location. The alternatives were fratricide and usurpation. To guard against the assassination of an heir, polygamous chiefs instructed their wives to live in different sections of their territory, surrounded by loyal followers. With the death of the chief, each wife lobbied for her son to become his successor.

Cattle were the main source of wealth in protohistoric Natal, and no chief, lineage, or clan ever had enough. Chiefs distributed cattle to subchiefs and other officials and used them to reward outstanding warriors. Such was the demand that stealing cattle became the main reason for raiding one’s neighbors.

The intensification of warfare gradually modified social behavior in Natal. According to Wright and Hamilton, a chief periodically rounded up all young men of appropriate age who lived in his territory. These youths were organized into a group called an
ibutho
(plural
amabutho
), and all went through initiation together. Although the young men came from different kraals, each ibutho was given its own name and insignia, creating corporate solidarity for a lifetime. Chiefs gradually came to rely on the amabutho as regiments of warriors, enforcers, and tribute collectors. In times of peace the amabutho could be sent out to hunt elephants, increasing a chief’s supply of ivory. What had begun as a ritual association became a means to expand a chief’s wealth and territory.

In 1787 Senzangakhona, chief of the Zulu, had an illegitimate son by a woman named Nandi. The boy was given the sarcastic name “Shaka,” a reference to an intestinal parasite that simulates pregnancy by causing a woman to miss her menstrual period. Senzangakhona made Nandi his third wife, but she was mistreated by the Zulu and banished to her home village when Shaka was six. The mistreatment continued until Nandi sought refuge with the neighboring Mthethwa in 1802.

The chief of the Mthethwa was Dingiswayo, a man with his own violent past. The son of a previous chief, Dingiswayo had once fled the Mthethwa under charges of plotting to kill his father. When he finally returned, he found his father dead and his brother installed as chief. Dingiswayo killed his brother, made himself chief, and set about expanding Mthethwa territory. His rationalization for subduing his neighbors was that their constant fighting was “against the will of the Creator,” and he intended to “make them live in peace.”

Shaka, by now a strapping, athletic teenager, became one of Dingiswayo’s most trusted warriors. His rise to power has been described not only by Gluckman but also by scholars such as E. A. Ritter and
John
Selby.

Dingiswayo defeated the Zulu and many of his other neighbors. As his victories mounted, his doting mother began to keep the skulls of his decapitated rivals in her hut. True to his goal of establishing peace, however, Dingiswayo did not always press his advantage. In 1813, for example, Dingiswayo defeated chief Zwide of the Ndwandwe, even though his Mthethwa forces were outnumbered 2,500 to 1,800. Dingiswayo declined to execute Zwide, a decision that would cost him dearly.

Dingiswayo’s sparing of Zwide was probably influenced by the traditional chivalry of warfare in Natal. The list that follows gives some of the principles of warfare at that time.

  1. Warriors in Natal wore sandals, advanced until they stood at a reasonable distance from the enemy, and then proceeded to hurl iron-tipped spears.

  2. Military formations were simple, consisting mainly of lines of warriors from a series of age-based ritual societies.

  3. An enemy who threw down his spear to concede defeat was spared.

  4. Women and children came out to watch the battles and were left unharmed no matter which side won.

One of the reasons Dingiswayo was able to defeat the Ndwande was because the men under Shaka’s command fought so fiercely. Dingiswayo was appreciative; as a result, when Senzangakhona died in 1816, Dingiswayo made Shaka the new chief of the Zulu. Now the 29-year-old Shaka controlled 100 square miles and an army of 500 men.

One of Shaka’s first acts was to punish the Zulu who had mistreated his mother when he was a boy. The lucky ones had their skulls bashed in. The unlucky ones were taken to a hill frequented by hyenas. There they were impaled on stakes and left to die slowly, while the hyenas closed in for lunch.

As Shaka’s military experience grew, so did his dissatisfaction with traditional warfare. Soon he was at work on the following strategies that would give the Mthethwa and Zulu an edge:

  1. Tired of throwing and retrieving javelins, Shaka had his blacksmiths create a new short-hafted, broad-bladed stabbing spear. He called his new weapon
ixwa,
after the sucking sound it made when pulled from an enemy’s chest.

  2. He had his warriors shed their sandals so that they could run faster. In the future they would surprise their enemies by sprinting toward them to fight at close range.

  3. He trained his men for close combat with the ixwa and a tough cowhide shield.

  4. He created a new battle formation, composed of four groups of warriors standing shield to shield. In the center was a block of seasoned veterans known as “the head,” who did the bulk of the fighting. Behind them was a block of reserves called “the chest,” who waited for a signal to join the fray. Extending out from “the head” were two curving columns called “the horns,” designed to encircle the enemy.

  5. He pioneered military formations that minimized the effect of being outnumbered. One was an unbroken circle, used when his warriors were surrounded. The other, called “the millipede,” was a linear formation of men with interlocking shields, used to cross territories where one was likely to be ambushed.

  6. Shaka also modified the amabutho. For years they had been age-based ritual societies, made up of youths from different kraals within the same chiefdom. Shaka, who by now had subjugated a number of formerly autonomous societies, expanded the system by creating regiments into which all warriors of the same age were placed, regardless of the chiefly territories from which they had come. Under Shaka’s direct control, these feared “age regiments” broke down old territorial loyalties and produced warriors beholden only to him. Shaka trained them puritanically, forbidding the youths to marry without his permission.

  7. Traditionally, an enemy who threw down his spear had been spared; this is probably why Zwide had not been killed by Dingiswayo. Shaka’s new policy, called
impi ebomvu,
or “red war,” abolished such chivalry. His regiments finished off the enemy, wounded, pursued, and killed all the retreating warriors they could catch, and slaughtered the enemy women and children who had come to watch.