‘Butchering the Brutes All Over the Place’: Total War and Massacre in Zululand, 1879

The Anglo‐Zulu War of 1879 has been represented in popular culture as a heroic struggle between well‐matched opponents and this has, until recently, been reflected in the historiography of the war. Incidents in which wounded Zulus were killed by the British are represented as regrettable examples of individual vengefulness. This article re‐examines contemporary accounts and argues that the war should be seen rather as an example of total war in which the British systematically destroyed the economic basis of Zululand and carried out a policy of refusing to take prisoners and massacring the wounded; towards the end of the war they were only saved from a policy of genocide by the capture of the Zulu king. The article concludes that these events resulted not from the actions of individuals but rather from the logic of European imperialism faced with the possibility of defeat by a black African kingdom.