"Did Shaka Zulu have an all-female regiment?" Topic
6 Posts
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| rhymoraz | 15 Mar 2018 12:32 p.m. PST |
This claim is made in a Hugo award winning article in passing, but I'm unable to trace it down. One writer, Joshua S. Goldstein in his book _War and Gender_ claims
"Shaka Zulu's army by one erroneous account had an all-female front-line regiment. Scholarship on Shaka's military tactics makes clear that all the soldiers were men."
but the footnote goes to a defunct site. Did he have an all female regiment? Are there miniatures of it? did it fight? |
| 15th Hussar | 15 Mar 2018 12:46 p.m. PST |
NWF is my beat, BUT he had a seraglio of sorts, organized in a military fashion, but what that fashion was, I have no clue. Females carried small shields and assegai's in their ceremonial dances, but I've certainly never heard of a Female Zulu regiment on the field of battle. Others will chime in, I'm sure. |
| 14Bore | 15 Mar 2018 1:54 p.m. PST |
I think so but don't quote me on it. |
| Winston Smith | 15 Mar 2018 2:11 p.m. PST |
I believe that the women were organized by year class, as were the men.
The men were organized into fighting regiments, while the women were reserved as "wives" for the men, once they were permitted to marry. I think.  |
| Gone Fishing | 15 Mar 2018 2:22 p.m. PST |
I believe Andrew and Winston are correct. While the women were regimented by age and marriageability, all fighting was done by men. The only African culture I can think of off the top of my head that had female warriors is that of Dahomey – and I've read that even in that instance their use has been exaggerated. |
Ed Mohrmann  | 15 Mar 2018 2:28 p.m. PST |
Goldstein may have been attributing the all-female
'Amazon' unit of Dahomey to Shaka Zulu. There were supposedly over 1,000 (and perhaps as many
as 5,000) female warriors in the Dahomey army of the
mid-19th C. Early in the period, they were armed with ML flintlock
firearms and later with Winchesters, according to
a couple of sources. Fighting in battle against the French, the 'Amazons' did
not do well, but not for lack of trying. The Smithsonian website has an article: link |
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