Resources: Key Texts
The following books (containing primary sources and analysis), articles, theses, and dissertations provide the most insight, in my view, into the Cattle-Killing Movement's history. Literary works and related criticism have been excluded from this list of resources.
* Entries with annotations or links may be expanded by clicking on the citation.
Andreas, Chris. "The Spread and Impact of the Lungsickness Epizootic of 1853-57 in the Cape Colony and the Xhosa Chiefdoms." South African Historical Journal 53 (2005): 50-72. Berning, J.M. The Historical "Conversations" of Sir George Cory. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1989. ISBN 0636011976. Berning, formerly with the Cory Library at Rhodes, edited this collection of transcripts of the dozens of interviews that George Cory conducted in the Eastern Cape in the early twentieth century. Many of Cory's interviewees witnessed and/or spoke of the Cattle-Killing Movement.
Boniface Davies, Sheila. "Raising the Dead: The Xhosa Cattle-Killing and the Mhlakaza-Goliat Delusion." Journal of Southern African Studies 33, no. 1 (March 2007): 19-41. Boniface Davies reveals new archival evidence that contradicts Peires's assertion in The Dead Will Arise that Mhlakaza and Wilhelm Goliat were the same person. See also Peires's article, "Cry Havoc! Thoughts on the Deconstruction of Mhlakaza," for his response.
Bradford, Helen. "Women, Gender, and Colonialism: Rethinking the History of the British Cape Colony and Its Frontier Zones, c. 1806-70." Journal of African History 37 (1996): 351-370. Bradford, Helen. "New Country, New Race, New Men: War, Gender and Millenarianism in Xhosaland, 1855-1857." Presented at the Oslo 2000 Conference: Session on Gender, Race, Xenophobia and Nationalism (Oslo, Norway). 2000. Bradford's gendered analysis examines primary sources and suggests that the Cattle-Killing "emerged, above all, from the cauldron of war." This paper explores the militant environment prevalent along the frontier during the 1850s.
Bradford, Helen. "Through Gendered Eyes: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing." South African and Contemporary History Seminar, University of the Western Cape. 2001. Bradford, Helen. "Peasants, Historians, and Gender: A South African Case Study Revisited, 1850-1886." History and Theory 39, no. 4 (December 2000): 86-110. Bradford, Helen. "Akukho Ntaka Inokubhabha Ngephiko Elinye (No Bird Can Fly on One Wing): The 'Cattle-Killing Delusion' and Black Intellectuals, c1840-1910." African Studies 67, no. 2 (2008). Brownlee, Charles Pacalt. Reminiscences of Kafir Life and History and Other Papers by the Late Hon. Charles Brownlee, Gaika Commissioner. Lovedale: Lovedale Mission Press, 1916. Ngqika Commissioner to Sandile during the time of the Cattle-Killing, Charles Brownlee witnessed the Cattle-Killing first-hand. His letters formed an important corpus of the colonial government's understanding and response to the Cattle-Killing. Brownlee was the son of missionary John Brownlee near King William's Town, and he spoke fluent isiXhosa and was respected by the Ngqika. Brownlee's letters and other writings, including a contribution by his wife, were collected for this volume.
Chalmers, John A. Tiyo Soga: A Page of South African Mission Work. Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot, 1877. Chalmers's biography of Soga draws upon his letters in part, and Soga's writings after his return to South Africa in 1857 comment significantly upon the effects of the Cattle-Killing Movement.
Dowsley, Eileen D'Altera. An Investigation into the Circumstances Relating to the Cattle-Killing Delusion in Kaffraria, 1856-1857. University of South Africa. 1932. Thesis. du Toit, Anthonie Eduard. The Cape Frontier: A Study of Native Policy with Special Reference to the Years 1847-1866. University of Pretoria. 1954. Diss. Gqoba, W.W. "Isizatu Sokuxelwa Kwe Nkomo Ngo Nongqause, Parts I and II." Isigidimi SamaXosa (March and April 1888). Gqoba, William W. "The Cause of the Cattle-Killing at the Nongqawuse Period." In Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in Xhosa. Edited by A.C. Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Gqoba's text on the causes and effects of the Cattle-Killing, originally appearing in Isigidimi SamaXosa and Rubusana's Zemk' iinkomo, were edited, translated, and republished in this book.
Hofmeyr, George. King William's Town and the Xhosa: The Role of a Frontier Capital. University of Cape Town: Cape Town. 1981. Thesis. Lewis, Jack. "Materialism and Idealism in the Historiography of the Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement 1856-7." South African Historical Journal 25 (1991): 244-268. Lewis offers a materialist critique of Peires's The Dead Will Arise and connects crumbling political structures with the development of the Cattle-Killing.
Moorcroft, Errol. Theories of Millenarianism Considered with Reference to Certain Southern African Movements. University College, University of Oxford: Oxford. 1967. Thesis. Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo. Africa is My Witness. Johannesburg: Blue Crane Books, 1966. In , Mutwa wrote that he waited thirty years to unveil the truth about the Cattle-Killing, "no matter how few believe it." He wrote the "Xhosa fell victims not to their own superstition, but to a vile and grisly practical joke, born in the ingenious minds of intelligent men." The movement was, he said, "one of the most cold-blooded murders in any age." Mutwa unsheathed the sharpest articulation of the Grey's Plot thesis, interspersed by a creative retelling of the events and two Mpondomise songs about Nongqawuse.
Offenburger, Andrew. "Smallpox and Epidemic Threat in Nineteenth-Century Xhosaland." African Studies 67, no. 2 (2008). Offenburger writes on the influence that smallpox scares had on daily life on the Eastern Cape frontier in the 1850s, and he explores what role this may have played, if any, in the Cattle-Killing. He specifically addresses the work of John Patrick FitzGerald, the first European doctor on the frontier. See also David Gordon's "Sword of Empire?"
>> Special Issue on the Xhosa Cattle-Killing
Peires, Jeff. "Second Thoughts on Nongqawuse." Presented at the Biennial Conference of the South African Historical Society (University of the Free State). 2003. Peires responds to several critiques of his The Dead Will Arise, many of which ran in a special issue of the South African Historical Journal. He especially engages with Helen Bradford's gendered analysis. This paper later became the Afterword of his book's 2003 edition, published by Jonathan Ball.
Peires, Jeff. "Cry Havoc! Thoughts on the Deconstruction of Mhlakaza." African Studies 67, no. 2 (2008). Peires, Jeff. "Suicide or Genocide? Xhosa Perceptions of the Nongqawuse Catastrophe." Radical History Review 46, no. 7 (1990): 46-57. Peires discusses the wide variation between written sources on the movement and popular Xhosa perceptions of the Cattle-Killing. He then considers the effectiveness of oral tradition and the historian's role in bringing a "useful past" into debate.
Peires, Jeff. "Sir George Grey Versus the Kaffir Relief Committee." Journal of Southern African Studies 10, no. 2 (April 1984): 145-169. Peires, Jeff. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1989. ISBN 0869753819. Peires, Jeff. "The Late Great Plot: The Official Delusion Concerning the Xhosa Cattle Killing, 1856-1857." History in Africa 12 (1985): 253-279. Peires, Jeff. "The Implosion of Transkei and Ciskei." African Affairs 91 (1992): 365-387. Stapleton, Timothy J. "They Are Depriving Us of Our Chieftainship: The Decline and Fall of the Traditional Xhosa Aristocracy." Historia 38, no. 2 (November 1993): 86-99. Stapleton, Timothy J. "'They No Longer Care for Their Chiefs': Another Look at the Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1856-1857." International Journal of African Historical Studies 24, no. 2 (1991): 383-392. Stapleton, Timothy J. "Reluctant Slaughter: Rethinking Maqoma's Role in the Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1853-1857)." International Journal of African Historical Studies 26, no. 2 (1993): 345-369. Stapleton, Timothy J. "Chapter Six: Are You a Chief and Led by Black Men? The Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1853-57)." Maqoma: Xhosa Resistance to Colonial Advance 1798-1873 (1994): 168-192. Wenzel, Jennifer. "The Problem of Metaphor: Tropic Logic in Cattle-Killing Prophecies and their Afterlives." African Studies 67, no. 2 (2008).
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