Shaka Killed - Sept. 22, 1828

Shaka, founder of the Zulu Empire, was killed on this day in 1828.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's September
twenty two. Shaka, the founder of the Zulu Empire, was

(00:23):
killed on this day in eight A number of aspects
of Shaka's life are really hard to conclusively pin down.
He's the subject of all kinds of stories in folklore
and pieces of oral tradition, some of which are probably exaggerated,
and others of which historians haven't completely agreed on the
details of. He was born in about seventeen eighty seven,

(00:44):
and the Zulu people existed at this time. Africa has
been home to literally thousands of nations and peoples and tribes,
all with their own languages, their own cultures, their own
unique aspects, and the Zulu are one of them. Shaka
was the son of a Zulu chieftain, although much of
his childhood and youth were spent among another tribe. When

(01:06):
Shaka's father died, in eighteen sixteen, Shaka returned home to
take his father's place overthrowing an older brother to do it.
And at the time there were not many people among
the Zulu. There were only about fifteen hundred Zulu. It
was one of the smallest people's in the area. But
Shaka changed all that, and that's really when the Zulu
became an empire. He had proven himself through military service

(01:28):
in his youth, and he said about reorganizing the Zulu
army to reflect his own innovations and what he had
learned in this time and in other militaries. He upgraded
their weapons and armor and instructed them in new tactics
and new strategies. And then he began a conquest of
the neighboring clans and people's, absorbing their members into the

(01:50):
Zulu after defeating them in battle. Although this made the
Zulu Empire much larger and much more powerful, it also
led some mass migrations and huge amounts of displacement as
people fled the advancing Zulu army and the violence that
was coming along with it. This period is known as
the Meficane or the scattering. Over the next year, the

(02:12):
Zulu quadrupled in size, and soon Shaka's army was large
enough to challenge the most powerful armies in Southern Africa.
The Zulu Kingdom became the most powerful nation on that
part of the continent at times. Though Shaka's military conquest
had been tremendously violent, he had a growing reputation of

(02:32):
being brutal in the world of warfare, and then in
eighteen seven, his mother died. His mother's death seems to
have sent him into just an uncontrollable spiral of grief.
He launched a massacre, and he outlawed the planting of
crops and the use of milk for a year, along
with the slaughter of milk cows. Aside from the obvious

(02:55):
problems that would come from banning the planting of crops
for a year and the lotter of animals that were needed,
milk was a major part of the Zulu diet. So
this led to a massive, massive famine, and in eighteen
two half brothers killed Shaka to stop him from destroying
what was left of the empire he had created in

(03:18):
eighteen seventy nine, a little over fifty years later, the
Zulu people were devastated in the Anglo Zulu war, which
ended in a decisive victory for the British over the Zulu.
You can learn more about that war in the September
seventeen episode of Stuffy Miss and History Class at the
same time. Though today the Zulu people are the largest

(03:39):
ethnic group in South Africa. Thanks to Christopher Hasciotis for
his research work on today's episode, and thanks to Tari
Harrison for her audio work on this podcast. You can
subscribe to the Stand History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,
and wherever else you get your podcasts, and you can
tune in tomorrow for the birth of a woman who
made a run at a pretty impressive glass ceiling. The

(04:00):
Boy from the Boot the boom of the book