This essay considers the acquisition of south- east African material culture by Europeans in the late nineteenth century, and the dramatic shift in the social significance of the object that occurs along with the shift in ownership. Each owner invariably identifies with the object in a different way, and the European collector brings his or her own particular and personal associations to the artefact, inevitably far removed from those of the African maker and user. The dynamics of this exchange offer us insights into how such objects were perceived at the time by Western eyes, insights that are particularly valuable because it is so rare that accurate information about the origin and date of an object survives. The travellers, soldiers, missionaries and tourists, among others, who collected these artefacts often mentioned their acquisitions in their memoirs and travelogues, providing us with a rich source of revealing anecdotes and recollections, which serve as the basis for this essay.

The initial shift in how an object is perceived is echoed today as we experience another dramatic change in perception of the significance of material culture from this region. In the past decade, these objects have been subject to an aesthetic re-evaluation, illustrated by the widespread acceptance of their display in public art galleries as opposed to the ethnographic museum which was their traditional repository. These shifts reaffirm Arjun Appadurai's often-quoted observation that objects have no meanings aside from those attributed to them by humans. As he writes, to understand such meanings we 'have to follow the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, and their paths. It is only through analysis of these paths that we can interpret the human transactions and calculations that enliven things … it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context.'² In the context of south-east Africa in the later nineteenth century, this essay focuses on who collected African objects, how the objects were perceived - as curiosities, souvenirs, relics, trophies and specimens - and how they came to be in the ownership of Europeans - through barter, loot and purchase from Africans and from early dealers. Thus, the emphasis is on patterns of consumption rather than means of production.

Nonetheless, it is important to remember that these artefacts had long and involved histories preceding the transfer of their ownership to Europeans. During their manufacture, specific trees would have been felled for their wood, ore was mined and smelted, wild and domestic animals were killed for their skins, and trade goods such as beads were secured through exchange. The artefacts were the products of labour- intensive processes, and the use of valuable materials such as beads, ivory, iron and copper wire ensured that they carried economic worth in African societies. Consequently, they were often prestigious objects, not necessarily put to utilitarian use, but rather regarded as ceremonial and luxury items, owned by elites and embedded with symbolism and references to rank and position. These latter issues are complex and wide ranging, and it is to anthropological and ethnographic studies that we look for an understanding of the context of their manufacture and original use.

European collectors' fascination with objects from Africa dates back to the Renaissance and Europe's first encounters with West Africa. As a manifestation of this interest, and as testimony of travel to distant lands, objects of material culture were sought and taken back to Europe.³ The age of exploration and enlightenment in the latter part of the eighteenth century accelerated this curiosity about foreign cultures and natural history from distant continents, and the obsession to order the rapidly expanding universe of knowledge further advanced the interest in material representations of the rare, unfamiliar and unknown. Thus we have instances such as the settler poet Thomas Pringle in 1822 sending Sir Walter Scott fourteen artefacts from the Cape including a kaross, a battle axe, knives, assegais and other weapons, horns and skins.⁴

By the late nineteenth century, the age of exploration was essentially over; the epic journeys by European explorers, during which they accumulated vast quantities of ethnographic and natural history specimens, belonged to an earlier era, with the exception of a few last travellers in this tradition. It was by contrast an era of early tourism, particularly in the coastal cities, where shipping companies docked regularly en route to Europe, India and Australasia, especially prior to the opening of the Suez canal in 1869. Invariably such tourists desired souvenirs from the indigenous cultures and this initiated trade in and production of artefacts. In this period, missionaries, for complex reasons that will be discussed, continued to be avid collectors of artefacts, but it was men associated with the military who seemingly acquired the bulk of surviving material culture. Tens of thousands of military men passed through the region in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 involved 6 669 colonial and imperial troops, with another 10 414 imperial troops brought to Natal after the British de-feat at Isandlwana.⁵ The South African War of 1899-1902, according to Thomas Pakenham, brought in 365 693 imperial and 82 742 colonial troops.⁶ It would appear that the many Europeans now residing in this region did not express the same interest in collecting artefacts as the British travellers and military officers. This observation is difficult to quantify, but is corroborated by the fact that almost every piece in this catalogue was located in Britain, and not in the former colonies in south-east Africa. Perhaps the colonial soldiers and settlers' familiarity with the objects from the region meant that such artefacts did not carry references to 'exotic' and 'epic' experiences.⁷

The abundance of soldiers in the region was the direct result of the recurrent conflict in south-east Africa during the late nineteenth century, with African communities (and European settlers such as the Boers) resisting Britain's (and other European powers') imperialist ambitions. For the self-assured British, the destructive thrusts of imperialism and the expense of distant wars were justified by the belief that they were creating a new, superior British and Christian world order. These attitudes are vividly illustrated in the young Winston Churchill's book on the contemporaneous conquest of Sudan in 1898. In it he provides a background to this conflict which is populated with caricatures of enemies who had, in fact, persistently resisted European control:

'Year after year, and stretching back to an indefinite horizon, we see the figures of the odd and the bizarre potentates on whom the British arms continuously are turned. They pass in a long procession: - The Akhund of Swat; Cetewayo, brandishing an assegai as naked as himself; Kruger, singing a psalm of victory; Osman Digna, the Immortal and the Irretrievable; Theebaw, with his Umbrella; Lobengula, gazing fondly at the pages of Truth; Prempeh, abasing himself in the dust; the Mad Mullah, on his white ass; and, latest of all, the Khalifa in his coach of state. It is like a pantomime scene at Drury Lane. These extra-ordinary foreign figures - each with his complete set of crimes, horrible customs, and "minor peculiarities" - march one by one from the dark wings of barbarism up to the bright footlights of civilisation. … The potentates and their trains pass on, some to exile, some to prison, some to death … and their conquerors, taking their possessions, forget even their names. Nor will history record such trash.'⁸

The Anglo-Zulu War and the Sudanese conflicts engrossed the British more than any of the other wars in their many colonial outposts at the time. Perhaps this bias was related to their preconceptions of colonial warfare, and the Zulus and the Mahdists matched their imaginative archetypal constructs of warriors: fighting, in their thousands, almost naked, bravely brandishing spears and shields, often in hostile landscapes. There are many respectful remarks about the heroism of the 'fearless' and 'valiant' Zulu and Mahdists in memoirs of these battles.⁹ Even though the British ultimately won their campaigns, the enemy often proved that the conquerors were not invincible and provided them with dramatic defeats, such as at Isandlwana against the Zulus in January 1879, at the battle of Majuba against the Boers on 26 and 27 February 1881, in the Sudan at Kashgil in 1883 when 10 000 Egyptian troops were slaughtered by the followers of El Mahdi, and similarly at El Teb in February 1884 when 3 500 soldiers were decimated by Mahdists led by Uthman Digna, known to the British as Osman Digna. General Charles Gordon, sent to evacuate the Sudan in 1884, was surrounded and besieged by the Mahdists at Khartoum, where he held out for five months. The news that he had been speared to death on 26 January 1885, two days before a relief expedition arrived, horrified Queen Victoria and sent shock waves through Britain. As will become evident, British admiration for their enemies intensified their desire to collect war trophies, thus explaining the survival of many Zulu and North Nguni artefacts. However, the British fascination with the Zulu at the time of the Anglo-Zulu War skewed (and in some instances stills skews) their portrayal of it and overlooks the complexity of the events and their repercussions. This war was not - as is often portrayed - a sequence of these gallant battles and although a counter-view of the Anglo-Zulu War is well-established in academic publications,¹⁰ the myths and assumptions of the past are not easily dissipated in the popular consciousness.¹¹

There are countless passages in the memoirs of soldiers who fought in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and the Battle of Omdurmam in the Sudan in 1898, among the many other battles of the period, describing the collecting of artefacts, weapons and war trophies. A few examples from journals of the Anglo-Zulu War illustrate the frenzied and compulsive collecting that was associated with British colonial warfare. General Sir Richard Harrison¹² recalled that after the battle of Ulundi, he 'rode up to the king's kraal … I got from there two wooden milk jugs and some assegais and shields.' Philip Robert Anstruther¹³ of the 94th Regiment of Foot wrote of the same battle, 'We walked about burning the whole place and picked up shields and assegais. I got five shields & 2 assegais - could not carry more.'¹⁴ He wrote again a few days later describing some shields he was sending home: 'The shields … 4 of them are quite new and are made out of the king's cattle and are the ones chiefs carry … I picked up a lot of shields, assegais & guns but could not carry them and had to drop them all again except the small shields & assegais.'¹⁵ An observation that probably best describes this sweeping collecting is in a letter home written by Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Arthur Harness of the Royal Artillery:

'It is curious the greediness about these old arms that is displayed. I see a doctor, to whom I gave leave to take "a few" assegais, making repeated journeys to his tent laden with spoil - and many others also ask for "one or two" taking armfuls away …'¹⁶

This obsession with collecting artefacts and souvenirs of war was extreme, and at times life was even put at risk to secure them. George Mossop, in his appropriately titled book, Running the gauntlet: some recollections of adventure, describes an experience when he was a young volunteer fighting in Zululand. At the battle of Khambula, he was ordered to pursue some Zulus; as he and his men rode out of the British laager, he saw an apparently dead

'big powerful fellow, and from his neck was hanging a large, beautifully-carved horn snuff-box, attached to a thin rope of sinew. Dismounting, I went to him, and as I was putting out my hand to secure the snuff-box, he suddenly drew up one leg, and with the sole of his foot kicked me in the pit of my stomach, bowling me over … However, I was not going to be kicked and frightened to death for nothing, and setting to work more cautiously, I secured the snuffbox.' ¹⁷

A point to consider is that only the upper echelons of the military would have been permitted - or could afford - to ship quantities of artefacts and weapons back to Britain. Considerable will would have been needed to overcome the logistical difficulties of transportation, particularly of large or fragile objects.¹⁸

Missionary collectors had a profound impact on south-east African traditions of manufacturing art and artefacts. Once a missionary appropriated an indigenous item, it became - as has been remarked in relation to Polynesia - 'an artifact of history for missionary discourse, an artifact made to speak at once of its original purpose and the transaction through which it had been detached from that purpose'.¹⁹ Artefacts were collected as evidence, as material to be used in propaganda campaigns in Europe to advocate the missionaries' work and to raise funds. Thus, weapons, in particular, were often acquired to illustrate the barbaric and war-like customs of heathen cultures that needed to be pacified by Christian practices. Or objects that had been carved or woven served as manifestations of artisanal skills which could potentially be adapted to more productive capitalist endeavours. A circular sent out in 1838 by the American Missionaries, which would have been received by their colleagues in South Africa, illustrates an approach that continued until the very late nineteenth century. These missionaries appealed to the public to source material for their 'Cabinet of Curiosities' - 'we solicit your aid in gather materials … without injury to your more direct modes of advancing the cause'. More specifically, they required:

'Idols, paintings … illustrating the native mythology. These are the objects which impress visitors most deeply … You can perhaps send us some to which sacrifices have been offered.

'Warlike weapons, of all descriptions. They convey a vivid idea of the savageness of heathenism, and impress the beholder with the reality of the dark places of the earth which are full of the habitations of cruelty.

'Domestic utensils; personal apparel and decorations - whatever illustrates the native customs and character. It would impart some notion of the extent of the operations of the Board, to bring into one view merely the costumes of the tribes embraced in its missions.

'Native manufactures, indicating improvement, taste or skill. Those of the farmer class are a pleasing memorial of the mission, and the others, like some under the proceeding    head[ing], are valuable as an exhibition of untaught, original mind.'²⁰

This mentality is further illustrated by the displays and handbook of the International Exhibition of 1862 in London. In the catalogue for the Natal section, in the 'Industrial department' is listed 'Kaffir manufactures, illustrating native industry and domestic economy: Shields, assegais, clubs, musical instruments, ornaments, implements, models, etc'; and in the Cape of Good Hope section, a similar exhibit is described as 'Specimens of aboriginal industry'.²¹ Together, the missionaries collected and shipped to Europe vast quantities of material, and the occasional survival of a piece retaining an original label recording place and date of acquisition reminds us of the rigour that underlay their often problematic endeavours.

Except for the rare instances just mentioned where a missionary label is still attached to an object, almost all surviving material culture, as has been noted, is now devoid of the context in which it was collected. Pieces were seldom acquired within an ethnographic or anthropological framework, but rather by people passing through the region for other purposes, whether associated with military or colonial campaigns or as early tourists. The observations made by a commentator on British ethnographic museums in 1909 illustrate how rare a scientific approach was to collecting at the time: referring to colonials and travellers, he wrote that

'People of this class … are not trained collectors and have little conception of the importance of carefully chronicled data respecting their "curios". The objects have been dumped in the museum with the scant information that the donor has been living in such and such a country … No importance is attached to the significant fact that on the way home the donor acquired more "curios" at various ports of call many thousand miles apart!'²²

An insight into the general ad-hoc approach to collecting is to be found in a fascinating and vast loan exhibition arranged in June 1900 to benefit the 'Loyal South Africa Colonists who are sufferers by the War'. The lenders, who were mostly people of title or prominent in colonial affairs, offered a strange assortment of items that they had obviously thought worthy of carrying back to Britain from South Africa. Artefacts were interspersed with specimens of natural history and many other oddities. For example, the loaned items included the fruit of a baobab tree and other seeds and pods lent by Miss Alice Balfour; 'Mr Theodore Bent's purse: a bag of beads used at Zimbabwe for exchange with the natives', lent by his wife; 'Skin of a very large lion from Lo Magundi district, Mashonaland' (lent by G Seymour Fort); and a 'Zulu's dress, or "moutchi", made of pieces of ox-hide strung together' lent by the Hon Mrs Evelyn Cecil. Among Sir Bartle Frere's many loans are 'wooden spoons', 'Specimens of Beadwork (the necklace and bracelets made by Cetewayo's wives)'; a large 'collection of carved sticks, assegais, Knob Kerries, etc'; 'Nautilus shells from beach of False Bay'; 'Paper Cutter made out of a bone of the elephant shot by HRH the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, when in South Africa'; 'Tissue paper cut in patterns, which the Malays use to drape their rooms at festivals', 'Wool Bird's-nest, with pocket, in which cock bird is said to sit and sing'.²³

An inquiring and systematic approach to collecting and observation tends only to be seen in the journals of explorers such as Thomas Baines and David Livingstone,²⁴among others, and professional and amateur ethnographers such as Emil Holub and HJ Junod. Often they attempted to assemble a representative sample of material culture for a specific museum where it remains to this day. There are many examples of such enterprises remaining in museums, including Baines' material sent to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the Natural History Museum in London,²⁵ and Junod's collection at the Ethnography Museum in Neuchatel in Switzerland; Holub's collections were distributed to more than 100 European museums and institutions, including the Naprstek Museum, Prague, and the Ethnological Museum at Munich, while Major-General Pitt Rivers sent buyers around the world for his museums as well as buying from dealers. Their scientific approach to collecting stands in contrast to that of the soldier or early visitor whose dispersed and idiosyncratic collections make up this catalogue.

An intention of those collectors with an ethnographic sensibility included securing material culture before pre-capitalist indigenous artefacts and arms became obsolete with the domina-tion of Western- made goods. The tentacles of trade, the trauma of war and the pressures of colonial society on land and labour led to a rapid decline in the manufacture of indigenous goods because traditional production processes were undermined and undervalued. The use of skins was supplanted by imported textiles, wooden vessels were replaced by tin bowls, and so forth. Fleet Surgeon Henry F Norbury, who was the principal medical officer of the naval forces landed in South Africa in the years 1877-79, observed this shift in terms of the variety of weapons used by the Xhosa people in the eastern Cape: 'When the Amaxosa are at war, perhaps a third carry some firearm, of which one sees the most extraordinary variety, from the old flint-lock brass-mounted musket to the present Snider rifle, and everyone carries a bundle of assegais, the blades of which are encased in a kind of quiver of bullock's hide.'²⁶ Yet not all that was imported was desirable, as a European traveller in the 1890s discovered in central southern Africa:

'Some gaudy-looking axes we had also brought excited their unutterable contempt, as the edges broke in use against the extremely hard kinds of wood growing here and while chopping through the bones of heavy game. They brought us their home-made weapons of soft iron, and with many exclamations of derision vaunted the superiority of their own manufacture.'²⁷

As these extracts illustrate, there were many reasons why European soldiers, missionaries, travellers and early tourists, among others, chose to return with artefacts acquired on their stays and travels in south-east Africa. The words they used to describe the artefacts reveal how they perceived them: an identical shield could be mentioned as a curiosity, loot, souvenir, memento, relic or trophy. These words - as opposed to a more neutral term such as 'specimen' - reflect collectors' preoccupation with their own perspective on the item: it was less an object of material culture than something that functioned as a personal representation of memory and experience of a foreign land.

The terms most often used to describe objects are 'curiosity' or 'curio'.²⁸ A curiosity can be seen as a collectable of natural history or material culture that was acquired for its unusual qualities. In the opinion of Barbara Benedict, curiosities served as manifestations of knowledge and inquiry, evidence to be used in the scientific programme to classify and dissect the physical universe as well as demonstrating the importance of their collector and/or owner. She writes,

'Symbolically, curiosities collected from overseas represent travel; seeing and possessing them demonstrates the knowledge of the world, particularly for those whose class and means prohibit them from travel itself.'²⁹

A few examples illustrate how loosely the word 'curiosity' was used in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Rose Pender, in her book No Telegraph; or, a trip to our unconnected colonies, published in 1878, before the influx of soldiers fighting in the Anglo-Zulu War, describes a stay at Bishopstowe, in the colony of Natal, where she and her husband visited a kraal and 'got a number of their curiosities, such as necklets, armlets, assegais, etc. They seem very eager to sell anything, and came in numbers when Mrs Colenso had told them we were ready to buy.'³⁰ Major CW Robinson, who fought at Ulundi and wrote an extensive description of the battle, remarked in a letter after the battle that there were 'no curiosities or loot whatever - nothing but assegais and Zulu shields as mementoes to take away.'³¹ By contrast, other soldiers repeatedly referred to assegais and shields as curiosities and, on occasions, even loot. Cornelius Vijn, the author of Cetshwayo's Dutchman: being the private journal of a white trader in Zululand during the British invasion, wrote that he saw a soldier, who had been sent to 'capture King's cattle, burn kraals, and plunder all the huts of curiosities,' walk away with four milking bowls over his shoulders, two in front and two behind; four or five girls' bead-fringes round his waist; three men's tail-pieces slung over one shoulder and below the other, like a shawl; a number of bangles on his wrists; on his hat a Zulu's ball of feathers; four or five assegais in one hand and six or seven knobkirries [sic] in the other.³² The war artist Melton Prior recalled that amid the burning of Ulundi, 'we came across a jolly nice hut', and Sir William Gordon-Cummings said, '"There ought to be something in the place," and he crawled in while I held his horse, and he came out with some nice spears and curiosities.'³³ A passage describing the campaign against Lobengula in 1893 suggests that a curiosity is an item that is unusual, sometimes amusing, and generally not of great financial worth: 'everything in the King's block of buildings [was] entirely destroyed. … There was nothing of value visible, although several curiosities, including the silver elephant given to Lobengula by the Tati Company, were picked up afterwards among the ruins.'³⁴

Other often-encountered words are 'relic' and 'memento'. These terms illustrate the desire of collectors for objects with personal associations to a leader, battle or event. Then as now, the cult of celebrity was pervasive. The names of Cetshwayo, Lobengula and the Prince Imperial added significance and value to an object to the point that such associations were usually more important than the aesthetic or material properties of that object. Collectors occasionally chose to affix a plaque or incise text onto an object to record such provenance (as was seen in a fascinating group of objects originally belonging to Zulu kings, exhibited on Zulu treasures at the KwaZulu Cultural Museum, Ulundi, and the Local History Museums, Durban, in 1996).³⁵ There are many passages in memoirs that reveal this Victorian bent for relics. A most macabre example is cited by Major-General Sir Hugh McCalmont in his memoirs of a visit to Rorke's Drift a few months after the battle, with one of his men by the name of Walsh:

'there were still a good many skeletons of Zulus who had been killed … to be seen … I was busy making a sketch of the scene … when my attention was attracted by a queer sort of rattling noise that resounded from some little way off, and looking to see what could be the cause of it I espied Walsh … engaged in collecting teeth … and he carried off some forty of these ghoulish treasures in his pocket with the intention of sending them home as keepsakes to his many inamoratas.'³⁶

Sir HM Bengough visited the kraal near where the Prince Imperial was killed in the Anglo-Zulu War and recalled that he 'brought away as a memento of the sad event a knobkerry stick, which I found in the kraal, and which now hangs in the hall of my house'.³⁷ In the instance of a famous battle, especially one that represented the culmination of a war, such as Ulundi on 4 July 1879, every European involved apparently wished to own a weapon or object that could serve as a relic embedded with memories of the event. A writer of the history of the 13th regiment in South Africa, published in 1880, just after the Anglo-Zulu War, remarked that, 'our mounted forces … cleared and burned all the kraals … and at length it was decided we should return, and every one [should be] … sure of getting some memento of Ulundi: shields, assegais, or anything to commemorate the event.'³⁸ And Colonel Henry Harford recalled: 'In my spare time I went over the battlefield of Ulundi and picked up one or two relics in the shape of shields, assegais, etc.'³⁹ The collecting of relics at Ulundi was obviously very thorough because when Bertram Mitford visited the battlefield a few years later, he 'was keenly on the lookout for relics, but could find none; a few bits of broken glass, remnants of ancient gin bottles, lay about and fragments of native property … On the site of the King's huts I picked up some pieces of a clay bowl, a fragment of an iron three-legged pot, and a smooth round stone such as would be used for polishing floors … Other relics more curious and valuable there were none.'⁴⁰

The cult of the celebrity guided Major Frederick Russell Burnham, DSO, later chief of scouts under Lord Roberts during the South African War, in his desire for objects in the Matabele war of 1893. Lobengula set fire to his stores on retreating from Bulawayo; however, 'one trophy that we managed to salvage was the great knobkerrie of Lobengula himself. This was a single white rhinoceros horn, probably one of the finest existent, with a knob at one end as large as one's fist. The horn was fully four feet in length and had been straightened and beautifully worked.' It was to be given to Cecil Rhodes because 'it seemed particularly fitting that this emblem of authority should pass from the grasp of the most powerful black monarch of Africa into the hands of the strongest white ruler who ever dominated the continent.'⁴¹

The term 'trophy' is also frequently used in accounts of collecting in the region in the late nineteenth century. On closer examination it appears that there are two aspects to the word's usage: to describe the collecting of prized ethnographic and natural history specimens, or the collecting of symbols of conquest and warfare. The collectors who sought both weaponry and zoological specimens often travelled through Africa as big-game hunters, and their journals and memoirs are usually a seamless mix of observations on indigenous animals and people. An example of one of the many such collectors is Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming, who travelled through southern Africa in the 1840s. On his return to Britain he published A descriptive catalogue of hunting trophies, native arms, and costume, from the far interior of South Africa …; the objects described were exhibited in London in 1851 on the occasion of the publication of his memoirs. Besides 16 items of ethnographic interest, the exhibition comprised 152 animal trophies from southern Africa including tusks, horns and skulls, and 10 North American and European animal trophies, as well as weapons: shields, assegais, battleaxes, rhino-horn knobkerries and eight karosses, each of which belonged to a specific chief.

The other aspect of trophy collecting related more specifically to warfare. Weapons were obviously an aspect of such trophy collections, especially if they were symbolic of a conquered enemy, but in some instances the trophies consisted of costumes or regalia which represented the soul and strength of a celebrated enemy. A few examples illustrate this tradition: in the opening conflict of the first Anglo-Boer War of 1880-1, the Boer soldiers were pleased to capture the mace of the 94th Regiment at the Battle of Bronkhorstspruit on 20 December 1880, although they did not lay hands on the regimental colours which, in the eyes of the British, would have been the ultimate war trophy.⁴² Towards the end of the Anglo-Zulu War, Major-General Sir Hugh McCalmont recalled that when they were searching for the Zulu king, they found his 'war dress at a place about forty miles from Ulundi; it consisted of 183 skins of monkeys and cats' which they took back with them to the encampment at Ulundi.⁴³ Colonel Henry Harford wrote of a search for Cetshwayo's 'crown and other paraphernalia presented to him on the occasion of his Coronation in 1873 by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, representing the Government of Natal' which had apparently been excavated shortly before his arrival at their burial spot on the battlefields of Ulundi.⁴⁴

Trophy collectors invariably arranged their collections of weaponry, animal heads and other artefacts in dramatic symmetrical displays to portray their achievements as hunters and travellers in the colonies. The taste for such arrangements, which became very fashionable in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, was rooted in the Gothic revival of the 1830s and its fondness for medieval arms and armour, prominently displayed in an entrance hall or library in a country house. Such graphic displays of weaponry interspersed with zoological trophies also became popular in museum exhibits and the stream of colonial exhibitions in London over the years. This manner of display also extended to modest domestic spaces associated with the colonies, as the photographs of the 'South African Students Union's rooms' in Edinburgh illustrate. The Committee room in which debates and concerts were held had, according to an article in the Cape Illustrated Magazine in July 1895, the appearance of a 'curiosity shop':

For many soldiers and travellers, personally securing a war trophy or curiosity was not an adequate appropriation of the object. They desired to stamp their taste and personality on it by adapting it to serve some decorative and symbolic purpose. This Victorian fondness for creating sentimental and impractical objets produced many strange and hybrid pieces utilising African weapons and artefacts. Major Anstruther, who took part in the campaign against Sekhukhune, principal chief of the Pedi people, near Lydenburg in December 1879, recalled that they took 'a magnificent elephant's tusk out of Sekukuni's kraal, weighs 62 lbs and we are going to have it made into a snuff box. I think we have now about a dozen snuff boxes of sorts in the mess but this one will take 2 men to carry it round.'⁴⁵ (It was mounted in silver and presented to the Officers' Mess of the 94th Regiment by Lt Col Murray where it remained until the disbanding of the Connaught Rangers in 1922 and was transferred to the National Army Museum.)⁴⁶ Just after the Anglo-Zulu War, Anstruther wrote home that hewas 'sending … 5 shields, some assegais, 3 or 4' and a mat and suggested that his family should 'put a pedestal … [on] to the bottom of the sticks' because 'they would make nice fire screens for the dining room'.⁴⁷ Sir Bartle Frere had similar thoughts and in later years exhibited a 'Fire Screen made of a small Zulu shield, picked up by the exhibitor on the battlefield of Ulundi'.⁴⁸ The symbolism of Zulu shields is aptly illustrated by the use of five replicas in a screen in Litchfield Cathedral installed to commemorate the soldiers of the 80th Regiment who died in the war.⁴⁹

The word 'souvenir' is seldom used by Victorian writers in relation to south-east Africa. This is perhaps because, in respect of this region, there was a proliferation of memoirs written by military men rather than travelogues written by tourists, with whom the term has generally come to be associated. 'Souvenir' is an all- encompassing word that carries the same associations of memory and occasion that are embedded in 'trophy', 'relic' and 'memento', yet also relates to 'curiosity' and 'curio' in that a souvenir often has their qualities of the unusual and is from a distant culture. Sidney Kasfir points out that the term is derived from the Latin subvenire, 'to come into the mind', and in essence a souvenir is an object that signifies something to be remembered.⁵⁰

The terminology used to describe material culture acquired in south-east Africa in the late nineteenth century is intimately bound up with the means of its acquisition, be it taken from a battlefield, bartered or bought from an African seller or purchased from a European 'curio' dealer in a town or port. Where military conquest was involved, such objects would frequently be appropriated by force or surrendered to the victors. The military in south-east Africa would rarely have considered their actions as looting, although they often termed the artefacts acquired in the course of war as loot, a word used very loosely. In the Victorian sense of the word, looting usually referred to capturing goods that were worth significant financial sums or of great cultural significance. In the British army, such loot was usually put up for auction and the proceeds divided among the officers and troops. In the case of the Abyssinian campaign, the valuables looted from the fortress of Magdala in April 1868 realised £5 000 at the auction after the battle, which was divided up among the troops. A representative of the British Museum spent £1 000 on 348 books from the king's library, which the institution still owns.⁵¹ In the punitive expedition against the Ashanti in 1874 led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, the palace in Kumasi was looted of gold royal regalia and other valuable objects. In the infamous instance of the British naval punitive expedition against the king of Benin in 1897, the Court of Benin was looted of 2 000 bronzes as well as ivories and other artefacts, which were afterwards sold and are now scattered in museums and collections across the world. Looting was later prohibited under international law by the 1899 Hague Convention of War.⁵²

In the wars of south-east Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century, the soldiers usually retained the curios, war trophies and food taken after a battle. Such items were not regarded as loot in the strict usage of the word because they were rarely made from gold, bronze, ivory or other precious materials, and at the time were not viewed as being of major cultural significance. Colonel G Hamilton-Browne, popularly known as 'Maori Browne', who led troops in the Ninth Frontier War in the Eastern Cape in 1878, reflected on the issue in his journal after the troops were instructed by their superiors to return goods and food they had looted from deserted settler houses:

'The word loot to a fighting man has a significance that renders it almost sacred. It has buoyed up many a weary and foot-sore warrior on a long and fatiguing march and has encouraged men … For although, in these degenerate days, it is inveighed against by the Exeter Hall, cum-kid-glove, anti-fighting, peace-at-any-price crowd, yet, it has been the incentive of nearly all wars … Why, therefore, should the poor, hard-fighting Tommy, be prevented from gathering a little of the fruit, that may have come his way, after he had run all the risks to win battles for his nation, who pocketing the lion's share of the plunder calls him a thief and marauder.'⁵³

This is not to say that British soldiers fighting in these battles did not dream of securing valuable loot, and that their enemies were not conscious of such desires. According to Major Frederick Russell Burnham, Lobengula 'on retreating had not only set fire to his huts but had also burned up an immense amount of ivory and treasure, along with valuable hides, horns, and skins that he had accumulated in his storehouses. We made a great effort to put out this fire, but it was impossible to do so, and we saved very little of what must have been one of the most extraordinary collections ever made.'⁵⁴ WH Tomasson, late adjutant of irregular cavalry, vividly recalled - in the style of a 'Boys Own' story - the troops' hunger for loot at the battle of Ulundi:

'On first entering [the king's residence] Captain Baker stumbled over two bits of wooden-like substance and kicked them out of his way; Lord William Beresford picks them up, and we see they are two elephants' tusks, only one other is taken, and that a small one, which Captain Baker keeps … Leaving the house we found a troop starting off to burn a kraal still further on … At the bottom corner there was a splendid pile of skins ready to make into shields. After the burning is over we have some time to rest, and go about looking for loot, a freshly turned up piece of soil attracts us, and sticking the assegai we happen to have into the ground it rings on iron, further investigation reveals a large slab of iron, evidently the lid of a safe; at last all is right, and our fortunes are made, we think; that fortune so oft delayed, so long sought for. At last we find out our safe turns out to be a large American cooking stove, planted in the ground about a foot deep. Still we think it must contain valuables, and pulling the boiler lid off discover - what? well, about the last thing we expect to see, a set of blacking brushes. Cruel irony, that condemned us to see our own hopes so shattered, and by so ridiculous an ending. … After this we sit down, and in sight of the still blazing huts share the last bottle of champagne left us in the world.'⁵⁵

Tomasson also recalled that a few days later some representatives of the Zulu king brought two huge tusks of ivory and about 160 head of cattle captured at Isandlwana to the British camp. The ivory was returned, and the cattle kept for some days while the negotiations for peace proceeded. But as Tomasson writes,

'The sight of the ivory aroused the natural desire inherent in every soldier … Vague stories of the wealth of the King went about. Splendid visions of loot, in the shape of gold dust, ivory, ostrich feathers and diamonds, filled the soldiers' eyes. Incredible stories of the amounts of treasure taken at Isandula were circulated. We believe the real amount was 300. It is needless to say these golden visions were broken, not a man of the Regulars being a sovereign the better for any loot taken. Some of the Irregulars got small sums from deserted kraals. The men took pains to conceal anything they did take, as they were afraid of being made to disgorge.'⁵⁶

The many surviving narratives of the battle of Ulundi confirm that no financially valuable booty was secured. Major-General WCF Molyneux recalled: 'I … reached Ulundi before it was quite destroyed, and got some of the white shields out of the shield house … but the heat was so intense that little looting could be done before it was all destroyed.'⁵⁷ Bertram Mitford, quoting an eyewitness account of the battle of Ulundi, wrote that in Cetshwayo's house 'there was nothing … but some old rat traps and three pieces of ivory, which fell to the lot respectively of Commandant Baker, Lord Beresford (who was first in the kraal), and Capt Cochrane, who fired the house'.⁵⁸ Guy C Dawnay, the big- game hunter who also fought at Ulundi, recalled that they ransacked the king's house 'pretty thoroughly, but there was no loot at all, nothing but here and there a spoon, a shield, a string of medlars dried, fat-jars, etc, etc, it was jumpy work staying long there, as the way out was rather intricate and amidst a mass of blazing huts and fences and clouds of smoke.'⁵⁹

In the South African War of 1899-1902, the British desired the support of the African people, and for the most part respected and protected their homes. However, the Boer soldiers did not have the resources and supplies of the British, and increasingly resorted to plundering provisions from African communities.⁶⁰ Looting therefore, such as there was, was about food, not curios. As the war intensified, there was widespread destruction of settlements and crops as a result of Lord Kitchener's 'scorched earth policy', but the earlier Victorian tradition of destruction to secure loot and booty was seldom apparent.⁶¹

As is implicit in some of these recollections, the British army frowned on imperial forces looting for personal gain, but the colonial forces and regiments raised for specific local wars were not bound by such directives. An extreme case of this was the 'Matabeleland Relief Force' employed in 1896, under the command of Colonel H Plumer, to quell the Matabele Rebellion. According to the journal of a trooper, they 'were forbidden to keep anything for our selves', but they were 'rather amused at the order for it would have required a clever man to prevent the MRF from looting'.⁶² They embarked on a journey of endless plunder: 'whenever we came upon a mission station we always did all the damage we could', and they burnt about 300 kraals and African settlements after seizing any food they could find.⁶³ The trooper's journal continues:

'Whenever we passed a waggon we looted it - we got every conceivable thing and lived on the best food. There was ten times as much as we could get through and take with us and any amount of stuff was wasted. I remember once after we had all drunk as much champagne as we could we started pouring it down the horses throats … we were all dressed in silk shirts and other things we had looted … I believe the Bulawayo merchants claimed 45 000 compensation from the Chartered Co for the damage we had done - they certainly didn't welcome those troops that went into Bulawayo, very heartily. The imperial troops went in shortly before us and a smoking concert was given for them and they were received with cheers but when any of our troops came in they would scowl and mutter something about "Plumers Looters"…'.⁶⁴

In the instance of the Anglo-Zulu War, another means of securing weapons to take back home was from the mounds handed in by Zulu soldiers after their defeat. Philip Robert Anstruther of the 94th Regiment of Foot wrote home on 12 August 1879 that 'a lot of Zulus have come, I should think nearly 500 and have given up arms & assegais & cows … I got six assegais but they are not very good ones as I was late in choosing.'⁶⁵ Nine days later he wrote that he had 'got some more assegais and am trying to get some chiefs' sticks for general distribution'.⁶⁶ A few days later he concluded that he now had '8 assegais' and was 'waiting for an opportunity to send them home'⁶⁷ In the days before the battle of Ulundi, Fleet Surgeon Henry F Norbury writes of the surrender of 'some 600 Zulus, about 240 of whom were men; they brought with them 53 guns, and a large number of assegais'.⁶⁸

Artefacts could also be purchased from the colonial troops and native levies assisting the imperial soldiers. Anstruther, who planned the conversion of the large tusk from Sekhukhune's kraal into a snuffbox, described the incident in a letter home and asked his family not to 'say too much' about it because 'the authorities might enquire about it'. He had bought the tusk for £31 'from the men of the irregular horse who got it'.⁶⁹ Captain WE Montague, of the 84th Regiment fighting in the Anglo-Zulu War, recalled that 'mats, guns, dresses, gourds, pillows, Isandlwana loot, everything which a Zulu thinks worth hiding', were hidden in the rocks near to a kraal they were about to attack; these were 'quickly hauled out, and packed away on the spoiler's backs for sale hereafter in the camp'.⁷⁰ The war artist Charles Edwin Fripp, appointed as special artist for The Graphic during this war, observed that 'our native allies revelled in the glory of burning and destroying without any risk to … [themselves], and returned to camp chattering and singing, laden with mealies, strips of meat, and Zulu utensils'.⁷¹ In the Eighth Frontier War against the Xhosa in the eastern Cape, Lt CH Bell of the Cape Mount-ed Rifles noted in his journal at the time of the action in the Waterkloof in 1851 that, 'The Fingoes found a ready market for their plunder among the officers of the 74th Highlanders, who were soon well supplied with Kafir women's headdresses made of beaded leather, ornaments and curiosities of different description.'⁷²

These quotes illustrate the desire on the part of some Africans to exchange artefacts. Money (in one form or another) was obviously a highly motivating factor in these exchanges. From the Africans' point of view, trading artefacts of material culture was one of the few means (apart from selling land or labour) to secure money and Western-made goods. Many examples from travelogues and memoirs have been quoted below; even though they are anecdotal, they provide a rare contemporary insight into the respective attitudes that informed the exchanges. An account by Emil Holub, on his return trip through the Matoka area in southern Zambia, illustrates that in instances the African sellers had a clear sense of the economic worth of their artefacts:

'I attempted to get from [the chief] Mo-Panza some rare examples of Matoka handicrafts and promised to pay him well with calico on the Zambezi … I had chosen mostly rare objects, such as long-stemmed pipes with attached fire-tongs; head decorations made out of seeds, fruits, ivory and bird feathers; a shield made out of gnu skin; beautiful dagga pipes; wooden bowls; clay pots, etc. Mo- Panza had already agreed to this deal when his brother tried to seize the opportunity to squeeze a rifle out of me. Only for this price, which I had refused to give him before, was I to get these rare things. Of course I did not agree to this. Because of this treatment I planned to leave Mo-Panza the very next day.'⁷³

There are many such instances when neither an offer to barter nor purchase could secure the weapon or object after which a European lusted. Evidence of such resistance to exchange refreshingly indicates that Europeans were not always omnipotent in colonial Africa, and that Africans retained their integrity and composure in the face of such demands. Bertram Mitford recalls the frustration of not securing a spear in Zululand because of its symbolic signifcance and its associations for the owner with the battles he fought during the Anglo-Zulu War:

'I saw that one of them carried an assegai with a blade like a small claymore, and seeing, coveted and resolved to have it if possible … I climbed to where they stood; and the warriors greeted me with the usual "Unkos!" and … we speedily became friends … Then taking up the assegai I began to examine it, suggesting that we should make an exchange, and throwing out all sorts of inducements. Not a bit of it; the jovial warrior would about as soon think of parting with his head-ring - or his head. He had fought with that very weapon "kwa Jim" (Rorke's Drift) etc, etc; no, he couldn't give it away on any account. It was a splendid specimen of a spear, but on no terms could I obtain it.'⁷⁴

Similarly, WR Ludlow, travelling in Zululand after the 1879 war, described seeing 'a large pile of shields' which 'occupied one side of the hut, and we had a barter with the head man for some of them, but he was very unwilling to sell.'⁷⁵ In another passage he writes, 'During my visit to a kraal I did a considerable trade in ornaments, in exchange for beads, handkerchiefs, and salampore, although everywhere I found the Zulus had a great reluctance to part with their finery.'⁷⁶ Theodore Bent travelling in 'Makalangaland' in the 1890s recalls meeting with a chief 'Matimbi' who had 'a splendid knife, carved and decorated with brass wire'. Even though they 'coveted' it, the chief was not prepared to barter and they could not obtain it.⁷⁷ On one occasion Bent saw some women hairdressing and admired a razor: 'She refused our most tempting offers to part with her razor, and it was not till sometime afterwards that we were able to obtain a specimen of this Makalanga ironcraft.'⁷⁸

It is often difficult to distinguish purchases using currency and those made through barter of trade goods. The anecdotes and narratives of these moments of exchange tend to describe surprisingly civil encounters, considering the preconceptions of hostility and racism between Africans and Europeans. A number of examples of exchanges demonstrate the dynamics at play. Melton Prior, at the time of the 1878 Frontier War in the eastern Cape, recalled that he easily persuaded Mrs Macomo 'to sell me her bracelets and snuff-box and necklaces. Having thus started buying, I went round the women, examining their adornments, and eventually returned to my tent with quite a collection, amongst which was some very clever beadwork, which I have to this day.'⁷⁹

Bertram Mitford, visiting Cetshwayo while he was a prisoner on the farm Oude Molen, just outside Cape Town, wrote that he paid a premium for pieces from the royal family. He was shown into a room where he

'found the ladies of the royal household, four in number … Each had her little stock of manufactures spread out on the floor, beadwork, grass spoons, etc, for which, by the way, they demanded full price. I selected a couple of the grass spoons, paying three shillings a piece for the same - I could have got them for a tenth of the value in Zululand, but royalty has its privileges - and rejoicing their hearts with a tin of snuff, I returned to their lord.'⁸⁰

Mitford was relentless in his quest for material culture. He provides an account of bartering with a man who had been wounded in the battle of Isandlwana:

'I happened to mention that I was rather on the look-out for curiosities, my friend produced a beautiful little horn snuffbox, and wanted to know if that was the kind of thing. I replied that it was, whereupon he handed it over with a laugh, saying that I must take it to show the people in England. He then asked if he should get me any more like it, and on receiving an answer in the affirmative he limped off down the road, returning in about half-an-hour with a lot of snuff boxes, bangles, spoons, and beadwork trifles, for which he said I must give him things in exchange, as they were not his own, and he couldn't make me a present of them as he did the first snuffbox. I took over the lot, to our mutual satisfaction.'⁸¹

Another example of an unusual exchange is provided by General Sir Bindon Blood:

'I was riding towards Dunn's kraal [in 1879] … when we met a party of Zulu women and girls carrying milk … I … halted for a moment to talk to the women who were full of remarks, complimentary and otherwise … Presently I noticed that the young lady had on a very smart waist-belt, and I offered to swop my sword- belt - an old gold-laced one with a silver mounted clasp - for her belt. To my surprise she jumped at the deal - so I took off my belt … and gave it to her, when she slipped behind a bush, made the change, and came back with her belt in her hand ready for me … The girl was wonderfully pleased with my belt, especially the "slings," swinging against her legs, seemed to delight her. I still have her belt.'⁸²

There are also accounts of exchanges that were seen as awkward at the time and can be perceived today as even more problematic. Frank N Streatfeild, resident magistrate in Kaffraria and commandant of native levies during the Ninth Frontier War of 1878, provides a particularly disturbing example:

'I brought a great many curiosities … of various descriptions, such as pipes, necklaces, assegais, beaded blankets, etc, etc. Whenever I saw a native with anything worth having, I at once proceeded to get an interpreter and have a deal. There was a ridiculous scene one morning when I was buying blankets from a Fingo woman. I bid very high for them, as I had no time to waste, nor did I desire to "marchander" with the dirty creatures. Though anxious to obtain the money offered, they were somewhat shy about uncovering their tawny hides, and as they parted with a petticoat or wrapper, they huddled up to the nearest woman, vainly endeavouring to cover their nakedness with the corner of the blanket of their next neighbour. I got much chaffed on the subject, and was told that I was positively indecent in bribing Fingo women to sell their garments, and go about the streets in a state of semi-nudity.'⁸³

Barter using beads and items of Western material culture was the conventional means of exchange between Europeans and Africans prior to the introduction of colonial currencies in Africa. An interesting insight into what was offered by Europeans in exchange is to be found in a passage by Emil Holub, who describes bartering with the Rolong for livestock, among other things:

'In front of the wagon I had spread out the goods I meant to exchange, originally intended for the purpose of ethnographic objects. These were a good suit of plush, a pair of shoes, two shirts of brightly coloured wool, a hat, half a dozen handkerchiefs, and half a roll of tobacco. The village chief arrived in person to inspect the goods, and drank a cup of coffee with us, but the people showed no inclination to agree to the exchange. From one of the Barolong I bought a wooden bowl in exchange for a calico skirt, from another two kiris and two jackal skins, from a woman two beadwork adornments.'⁸⁴

Guns and gunpowder were always desired by Africans in their trade with Europeans. The Scottish big-game hunter Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, who travelled across southern Africa in the 1840s, describes in detail a complicated barter with 'Sicomy', the 'King of the Baman- qwato',⁸⁵ on 4 July 1844 in which a rhino-horn knobkerrie was exchanged for a cup of gun-powder:

'The king had in his possession a most wonderful knobkerrie, which I was determined to obtain. It was made of the horn of the kobaoba,⁸⁶ a very rare species of the rhinoceros, and its chief interest consisted in its extra-ordinary length, which greatly exceeded anything I had ever seen of the kind before, or have since met with. Handing Sicomy my snuff-box, I pointed to the kerry, [and] … I then asked him to present it to me, that I might have something to keep in remembrance of him; but he replied that it belonged to his wife, and he could not part with it. Presently, however, while sipping his coffee, he said that if I chose I might purchase it. I asked him what he required for it, and he answered, the cup which he then held full of gunpowder. Accordingly, when his majesty had drained the cup, I handed him the powder, and became the possessor of the kobaoba kerry, which is now in my possession, and on which I place a very great value.'⁸⁷

In focusing on the differences between cultures, as is customary, we perhaps overlook a similarity: the fact that Africans and Europeans were mutually curious about each other's material culture. It is perhaps too often forgotten that there were also occasions when Africans desired curiosities and relics of European material culture. There are in fact many anecdotes in the memoirs of the time of Africans seeking such souvenirs and artefacts. For instance, the practice of collecting a lock of hair as a memento was not only a Victorian habit, as J Theodore Bent, travelling in the country of the 'great Makalanga chief called Gambidji' in the 1890s, experienced:

'the inhabitants … were almost beside themselves with delight when my wife took down her hair and showed them its length. They greatly prized a gift of a few of these long hairs, which they will doubtless keep as a memento of the first white lady who ever came amongst them.'⁸⁸

After the Anglo-Zulu War, Bertram Mitford, travelling in the region of 'Inhlazatye', noted that several Zulu men 'had snuffboxes stuck in their ears, consisting of revolver cartridge cases with stoppers, which they said they had picked up at Isandlwana.'⁸⁹ Thomas B Jenkinson of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and late Canon of Maritzburg, who was in Natal in the 1870s, recalled after the war that:

'The natives bring us a great number of things found on the battlefield; they must have an immense quantity hidden away. They tell us that if it had not been for the plunder on the field, the whole army would have come on after the fight; but their leaders could not get them on. They say it is clever strategy on our part to take so many things about with the army to engage the enemy's attention. A man brought a pair of opera-glasses yesterday; a variety of things is brought. The commonest of these are pickaxes; they have brought so many of these, that we laugh and say we shall take a contract for a road through Zululand.'⁹⁰

WR Ludlow saw in one of the huts in John Dunn's village 'a collection of guns, rifles, swords, helmets, bottles, flasks, and property of all kinds captured by the Zulus at Isandula and the Intombe river where one of our convoys was surprised.'⁹¹ He also recalled that after dinner one evening at John Dunn's village 'an Induna came in with Lieutenant Douglas's sword, saddle bags, and watch; also the helmet of the trooper who was killed with him. It made one feel very melancholy to look at the half rusty sword, with the marks of blood on the blade, showing how gallantly its owner had defended himself.'⁹² Unfortunately for the Zulu, European material culture in the form of guns, opera-glasses and pickaxes has not enjoyed the same aesthetic re-evaluation as their own.

In the spectrum of interactions over material culture, gifts by Africans to Europeans are perhaps the most easily misconstrued. Obviously there was an imbalance of power in the favour of the Europeans, but anecdotes of such contacts (admittedly written by Europeans) often allude to warm and engaging encounters. Bertram Mitford describes such an interaction with a headman or chief in Zululand:

'One thing that sent Vumandaba up in my estimation was that he did not begin by asking for anything and everything … he was greatly delighted with the gift of a large knife and a few other things I had brought … He made me a present of a likely-looking knobkerrie "to remember him by", which I have still …'⁹³

The Fleet Surgeon Henry F Norbury describes an incident in the Eastern Cape when he requested from a young woman 'a very nice bag made of wild cat skin … She handed it to me, but very reluctantly, and I could perceive how sorry she was to part with it; upon which I returned it. Her face beamed with pleasure …'⁹⁴

The tradition of taking artefacts as souvenirs from visits to South Africa is also evident in symbolic presentations made to prominent politicians or royalty. On the occasion of the royal tour to South Africa by the Duke of Cornwall and York, later George V, in 1901, the 23 'native chiefs' he met with in the gardens of Government House presented the royal visitors with 'handsome karosses of tiger [sic], leopard and jackal skins and shields, assegais and beadwork'.⁹⁵ The catalogue of gifts given to the Duke and Duchess includes - aside from illuminated addresses and South African War memorabilia - ten entries for African artefacts. These included a 'Zulu basketwork bottle and cover used for native beer' presented by the Governor of the Cape Colony, a 'knobkerrie with a brass ring through the end, overlaid with beadwork … presented by the native chiefs representing the tribes of the Transkeian territories', an 'oval hide shield' presented by 'Bokleni, chief of the Pondos west of Pondoland', and a 'walking-staff, with ring handle, spirally twisted base, found in the centre with the figure of a snake … presented by Veltman, headman represented the Fingo tribe in the Transkeian territories', as well as beadwork, pipes and assegais etc.⁹⁶

Another important aspect of material culture which is seldom mentioned is the manufacture of objects expressly for sale to Europeans and catering to European tastes. This is a complex issue which raises a host of related questions around concepts of authenticity, originality and 'tourist art'. In sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in south-east Africa, African communities in the nineteenth century seldom produced objects for European consumption in the same way that the Native American Indians and other indigenous societies responded to the challenges of earning an income in a new economic order. The Native American Indians used their traditional artisanal skills to produce goods which were extensions of European material culture, such as beaded handbags and wastepaper baskets. ⁹⁷ In south-east Africa, it was generally only once the missionaries' efforts at redirecting the 'industry' of African people came to fruition early in the twentieth century that European forms were emulated using indigenous techniques and aesthetics. A conversation in a Herman Charles Bosman short story illustrates the attitude of the time:

'"Here's something that we want to encourage," Reverend Keet said … "Through art we can perhaps bring enlightenment to these parts. The kaffirs here seem to have a natural talent for woodcarving. I have asked Willem Terreblanche [an assistant teacher at the mission station] to write to the Education Department for a textbook on the subject. It will be another craft we can teach the children at school."'⁹⁸

Subsequently, traditional material culture was produced for Europeans to purchase, even though this practice often failed (and still fails) to fit into the European image, as Johannes Fabian observes, 'of savages who may "barter" or incidentally part with their objects but who were not expected to have mercantile ambitions.'⁹⁹ The boundaries between material culture
and 'curios' are fluid and dynamic, and an observation made in relation to aspects of American Indian art could well be extrapolated to south-east Africa:

'Sizable collections of Lakota Plains Indian art were amassed early in the twentieth century. They are filled with objects that refer to a traditional lifestyle - a lifestyle for which such things had ceased to be necessary long before they were collected and, in some cases, long before they were actually made. The artistic record in other Native North American regions suggest that many of these objects were produced for a new audience, a non-Native clientele. However, it is often virtually impossible to distinguish objects made for Lakota use from those made for a non-Lakota audience unless they display clear evidence of wear or use.'¹⁰⁰

There is a real difficulty in distinguishing between items made for internal and external consumption because travellers would rarely admit that they had acquired a piece of beadwork or staff that had been made expressly for sale to Europeans, and the primary sellers of such material, the curio shops in the ports, would also not have promoted the fact that such material had been produced for sale.

The issues are clearer with regard to figurative sculpture in south-east Africa. Aside from isolated initiation figures in the Tsonga and Venda societies, there was no strong tradition of figurative carving in this region: the emphasis of the makers and users was always on material culture, whose carving celebrated the aesthetics of abstraction. Consequently, it would appear that almost all the figurative staffs and freestanding figures dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in south-east Africa were carved to meet European demand for figurative imagery. The seamless dynamic between supply and demand ensures that it is difficult to fully understand the evolution of production of figurative carvings but we can be reasonably certain that they had limited use in indigenous societies.¹⁰¹

The demand for African material culture was met by European dealers and traders in the principal ports and towns who specialised in securing such artefacts to sell to visitors. The directories of the late nineteenth century list many such dealers, and the newspapers carry advertisements for such operations, in instances at a surprisingly early date. The traders Norden & Jarvis announced in the Grahamstown Journal in 1833 that they had 'received a number of Zoola Ornaments and Culinary Vessels, from Natal, which are on Sale at their Stores'. Mrs Parlby who wrote Wanderings of a pilgrim, in search of the picturesque, during four and twenty years in the east (London, 1850) called at the Cape several times, and spent about eight months there in 1843- 4. She was always on the lookout for curios, and bought four Xhosa bracelets/anklets made from ivory, and a pair of bullocks' horns, well polished, for four shillings, 'but the enormous price asked for specimens in Cape Town deterred me from making as many purchases as I should otherwise have done'.¹⁰² Karosses, made of fourteen wildcat skins, 'sold in Cape Town for £3 15s', and 'for one of the skin of the red jackal, containing sixteen skins, and very large, £4. A riding whip of the rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide, called a sjambok, costs three shillings and sixpence, which, considering that the price on the frontier is fourpence halfpenny, is a tolerably good percentage.'¹⁰³ She and her husband called at the Cape again in 1845 and stayed for nine days. On this occasion she bought 'a kaross of eighteen heads, as it is technically called, the sole garment worn by Kafirs, for four pounds; it is very large and handsome, consisting of the skins of red jack als … these skins are much sought after by officers on service, which is perhaps the reason they are so expensive in Cape Town.'¹⁰⁴

Examining the newspapers through the years produces many examples. For instance, in the Cape Argus in April 1859 under the heading of 'CURIOSITIES', it was announced that 'Mr Caffyn has been instructed to sell, at his commission sale, this morning, a quantity of Kafir … and other curiosities, including Polished Horns, Walking Sticks, etc, etc'.¹⁰⁵ The following month an advert appeared for an 'Extensive sale of ELEPHANT TUSKS / Messrs Blore and Bartman will sell, on the Parade tomorrow (Wednesday June 1) at eleven o'clock, 4300 lbs of ivory, 200 skins (a choice assortment), 2 cases of curiosities, and a Lot of fine ostrich feathers.'¹⁰⁶ In the 1890s there were many dealers in the field. The Cape Register in June 1892 carried an advert for B Benjamin, Lennon's Building, who sold curios;¹⁰⁷ the following month an advert appeared for L Fienberg, Castle Street, who also sold curios.¹⁰⁸ Mr A Sieradyze advertised his shop in Plein Street (and a branch in the Metropole Hotel) which offered for sale the 'largest stock of Native curios in South Africa' as well as many other items including 'ostrich-feather fans, rhinoceros hide sjamboks, hand-painted silver leaves, etc, etc.¹⁰⁹ According to the catalogue of the Industrial Exhibition in Cape Town in 1904-5, he was 'among the most extensive, if not the most extensive, dealer in curios of all kinds in South Africa. He shows at this stand all kinds of fur and feather goods, shells and weapons.'¹¹⁰ In Natal, the firm HT Peach in Pietermaritzburg published large advertisement s in the annual Natal directories in the 1890s offering for sale various goods and curios, and later in the decade also established a branch in Durban. There are many other such examples which point to an extensive trade in curiosities.

The extent of trade is evident in the annual statistics of exports from the Colony of Natal which fell into a separate category 'Curiosities'.¹¹¹ From these figures, it is clear that the value of exports and number of packages rose dramatically when there was an influx of British soldiers in the colony. In 1879, 48 packages were sent with a value of £318 and in 1900, 200 packages were exported with a value of £1 644.¹¹² These would not appear to be huge amounts but, bearing in mind that these are only the official exports and the tendency to understate the value of goods in transit as well as the relatively small unit cost of African artefacts, it would appear that significant quantities of this material were taken abroad. There are very few accounts of this trade, presumably because it did not have the same narrative appeal as securing items from battlefields, but it could be argued that most of the works that have survived were taken to Europe in this context.

The many colonial exhibitions held in London from the latter part of the nineteenth century until the interwar years displayed large selections of south-east African material culture sent from the Cape and Natal.¹¹³ Both regions sent 'curiosities, natural and artificial' to the International Exhibition of 1862. At the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, there were displays of objects from the Cape¹¹⁴ and Natal,¹¹⁵ and the respective catalogues list the array of weapons separately from other implements, utensils and traditional dress. The 1886 Colonial & Indian Exhibition was a significant event in London: it stayed open until 10pm every night and 11pm on Wednesday and Saturday. There were once again separate catalogues for material from the Cape and Natal. On the occasion of the enormous Stanley and Africa Exhibition in London in 1890, a range of 'weapons, implements, dress and ornaments, etc' was displayed in the 'Native Section'.¹¹⁶ The objects that received the most attention in The Times reviews were the spears which were dramatically displayed in huge fan-shaped arrangements.¹¹⁷ There were similar displays at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and many of the regimental and provincial museums. Once these exhibitions closed, the goods were disposed of in London,¹¹⁸ and, for instance, the benevolent collector Frederick Horniman purchased some beadwork after the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition.¹¹⁹

In Europe, and especially Britain, dealers specialising in ethnographic artefacts - and what would later be called 'tribal art' - started trading actively in the material culture and 'curiosities' that had been brought back from the colonies.¹²⁰ In the well-developed consumer society of Europe, collectors and museums competitively sought out material culture from the new world. Col LAD Montague remarked on this trade in ethnographical artefacts from south-east Africa, especially weapons, in his book Weapons and implements of savage races (London, 1921): 'Kaffir assegais are not, as a rule, expensive, and can be obtained at about 2s apiece. Some of the specimens figured cost me even less than this, though I have been asked 5s for no better ones. Numbers were brought home after our various South African campaigns.'¹²¹

The pioneering dealer was WD Webster who in the late 1890s issued the first illustrated sale catalogues of ethnographic articles.¹²² He was followed by WO Oldman who dealt 'in weapons and curiosities', and who also published regular illustrated catalogues. These latter catalogues offer a fascinating insight into the taste of the time for weapons, although occasionally curiosities such as snuff containers and trinkets from south-east Africa were included.

Interestingly, those pieces which are highly valued today, such as headrests, very seldom appear in the catalogues.¹²³ In Oldman's first catalogue, dated 1903, he offered an old 'Zulu shield of buffalo hide' at 7s, an 'old Zulu spear' for 3s, a 'Zulu knobkerrie' at 3s and also a 'Basuto gun of European make but used and ornamented by natives, perfect, 6.6s'. A few more examples listed in his subsequent catalogues illustrate the type of south-east African material in which he dealt: in February 1903, a 'Zulu stabbing spear, large heavy blade, old and rare, 9.6s'; in March 1903, a 'Caffre Knobkerrie, dark polished wood, [which] would make a good walking stick 4s', 'Zulu shield, hide, 28" 1g: said to have belonged to one of the band that killed Pr Imperial' 10.6s'; in July 1903 a 'Mashona Battle-Axe, shaft partly covered brass wire work 5.6', a 'Mashona spear, shaft covered in brass wire work 8.0'; and in October 1903, a 'Mashona knife hilt and sheath of finely carved black wood 12.6s'.

The advent of modernism brought with it a pronounced interest in figurative pieces and masks from central and west Africa, but the material culture of south-east Africa formed no part of the canon of African art advocated by the leading dealers and collectors. This stance was affirmed by the colonial and later apartheid power structures in South Africa who advocated ethnography that assisted in constructing ethnic classifications and instilled a belief that almost no African art was produced in the region. Meanwhile, the general disdain for objects of everyday use, which were not necessarily figurative in conception, continued until the pioneering publications in the 1980s of the late Roy Sieber in particular, which have brought utilitarian artefacts to the attention of audiences for African art.¹²⁴ His re-evaluation of such pieces in a pan-African context held particular resonance for south-east Africa because of this region's rich tradition of material culture. Gradually a group of scholars associated with the University of the Witwatersrand unpacked the complex regional and ethnic classification of south-east African artefacts and debunked the long-held notion that little African art was produced south of the Zambezi. They also exploded the assumption that the African art - such as it was - was all of 'Zulu' origin, and constructed a sense of the arts of the Venda, Tsonga, North Nguni, Sotho and South Nguni peoples, among others.

In terms of south-east Africa, the landmark event was the loan of the Brenthurst collection, acquired from Jonathan Lowen in London, to the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1986 by Mr HF Oppenheimer and the publication of Art and ambiguity: perspectives on the Brenthurst collection of southern African art in 1991. The collection focused on works carved from wood (headrests, staffs and figurative pieces), beadwork and snuff containers. Within the past decade and a half, this institution's collection has grown substantially through the support of the Anglo American Johannesburg Centenary Trust and now includes many seminal nineteenth-century works as well as an extensive array of later pieces; it is arguably the single most important repository of this material in the world. The University of the Witwatersrand has also actively collected in the field with an emphasis on pieces collected in recent years, although they have acquired some significant historical works. The collection of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town is particularly strong in historical and contemporary beadwork but they have also assembled a small but interesting collection of late nineteenth-century headrests, staffs and items of snuff. As a result a significant part of the surviving late nineteenth-century material culture is now in institutional collections back in South Africa. Yet there are interesting emphases and omissions in these collections. The traditional European taste for figurative African sculpture is reflected in these collections in the predominance of works produced for the tourist market in the late nineteenth century: throughout these collections are figurative staffs and self-standing figures which in all likelihood had limited use in a precolonial economy.¹²⁵ The rarity of nineteenth-century pottery and basketwork is understandable because of their fragility: very few examples of either were ever taken to Europe. More puzzling is the fact that weapons are seldom encountered. As has become evident, weapons were a significant component of collecting by Europeans in the late nine-teenth century in south-east Africa, and a fair number have survived. However, such shields, knobkerries, axes, spears and knives tend to be collected by individuals and institutions interested in militaria and there have been no substantial publications or exhibitions on this aspect of the material culture. For instance, the Brenthurst collection includes very few weapons and this bias is reflected in the Johannesburg Art Gallery's subsequent collecting policy which expressly excludes weapons. The research, such as it is, tends to be from the perspectives of ethnography and military history rather than art history. This is a field that awaits reconsideration and recontextualisation in terms of contemporary concerns.

As Appadurai said, to understand the meanings of objects we have to follow the paths of the things themselves. In terms of material culture from south- east Africa, their meanings have shifted through a sequence of exchanges from Africa to Europe and elsewhere (including back to Africa). They have been used as material culture and symbols of power in African societies, acquired by European missionaries, travellers, soldiers, colonial officials and early tourists as war trophies, souvenirs, curios, mementos and ethnographic objects, and their meanings are yet again metamorphosing in response to the cultural preoccupations of the present day. Their intrinsic aesthetic appeal and rich history will continue to warrant re-evaluation in the future, from perspectives probably far removed from those of their original makers and owners a century ago. In our time it is our responsibility to repatriate and reunite objects within their cultural context and construct a corpus of the surviving material to serve as a bridge to the rich recent past of the indigenous peoples of south-east Africa.

Thanks to Jackie Loos for her assistance with research, and to Rayda Becker, Rochelle Keene, Ian Knight and Duncan Miller for their valuable contributions.

1    Bertram Mitford's description of objects taken after the battle at Ulundi in 1879 in his memoirs Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, pp220- 221.
2    Arjun Appadurai (ed), The social life of things, Cambridge, p5.
3    The purchase of an African idol by Charles the Reckless, Duke of Burgundy, in the 1480s is the first record in history of an object of African art being collected by a non- African. See 'History and African collections', www.africans-art.com.
4    SALQB 6,4 (June 1952), pp 116-8: More letters from Thomas Pringle to Sir Walter Scott, 1822.
5    British War Office (Intelligence branch), Narrative of the field operations connected with the Zulu war of 1879, London, 1881. Appendix A: Composition of columns and distribution of troops on 11th January, 1879, pp145-6; Appendix B: Despatch of troops to Natal after receipt of intelligence of the affair at Isandlwana (fully armed and equipped, and provided with camp equipment), unnumbered leaf between pp154-5.
6    Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, Johannesburg, 1997, p572.
7     For an overview of the many colonial troops that fought in the South African War, see John Stirling, The colonials in South Africa 1899-1902: their record, based on the despatches, Edinburgh and London, 1907.
8    Winston Spencer Churchill, The river war: an historical account of the reconquest of the Soudan, London,1899, vol 2, p218.
9    Stephen Leech, '"Aggressive by nature, depraved and like Nazis", images of Zulu violence', Kleio, XXX, 1998,
pp89-108; and S Martin, British images of the Zulu c1829-1879, unpublished PhD, University of Cambridge, 1982.
10    See Richard Cope, Ploughshare of war: the origins of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, Pietermaritzburg, 1999; Jeff Guy, The view across the river: Harriette Colenso and the Zulu struggle against imperialism, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2002; Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific majesty: the powers of Shaka Zulu and the limits of historical invention, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998; and John Laband, Kingdom in crisis: the Zulu response to the British invasion of 1879, Pietermaritzburg, 1992.
11    As Jeff Guy wrote in 1979: 'For nearly a century journalists, military men, and historians have excited their readers with accounts of the formal battles, emphasising the suicidal bravery of the Zulu, the imperturbable courage of the redcoats, the ineffectiveness of the assegai when matched with the breech-loading rifle and the Gatling. The victory at Isandlwana is seen as an historical accident; the consequence of inept leadership and the absence of the screwdrivers needed to open ammunition boxes. But at Ulundi the inevitable victory was won when British fire-power finally persuaded the Zulu of the futility of resistance, breaking the Zulu army and with it the power of the Zulu dynasty. However, this approach, by removing the war from the social and political context in which it was fought and concentrating on the pitched battles, misinterprets the invasion's place and significance in Zulu, and southern African, history.' Jeff Guy, The destruction of the Zulu empire: the civil war in Zululand 1879-1884, Pietermaritzburg, 1994, p55.
12    Richard Harrison, Recollections of a life in the British army during the latter half of the 19th century, London, 1908.
13    Philip Robert Anstruther (1841- 1880) was a member of the Scottish family of Anstruther of Balcaskie. He was commissioned as an ensign in the 94th Regiment of Foot (Connaught Rangers) on 31 December 1858. In 1870 he married Zaida Mary, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Erskine of Cambo, Fife. The couple had two sons. Lt Col Anstruther died of wounds, having been ambushed by the Boers at Bronkhorstspruit on 20 December 1880. PH Butterfield, War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986- 89).
14    PH Butterfield, War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89), pp34-5.
15    PH Butterfield, 'The letters of Colonel Davies of the Grenadier Guards, 1879', Africana Notes and News, March
1992, 30(1), p44.
16    Sonia Clarke, Zululand at war 1879: the conduct of the Anglo-Zulu war, Johannesburg, 1984, pp168-9.
17    George Mossop, Running the gauntlet: some recollections of adventure, London, 1937, pp73-4.
18    Although the purchase of commissions in the army was abolished in 1870, officers still tended to be drawn from the upper and upper-middle classes and to have been educated in public schools.
19    Nicholas Thomas, Entangled objects: exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific, Harvard, 1991, p156.
20  Circular sent out by the American Missionaries, Boston, 27 June 1838, reprinted in Letters of the American Missionaries 1835- 1838, edited by DJ Kotze, Cape Town, 1950, pp256- 7.
21    International Exhibition of 1862, The illustrated catalogue of the industrial department, vol III: colonial and foreign divisions, London, 1862, pp16, 28.
22    FW Knocker, 'The practical improvements of ethnographical collections in provincial museums', The Museums Journal, November 1909, pp194-5.
23    Catalogue of a loan exhibition of South African sketches and curiosities, Grosvenor House, 1900.
24    See A guide to the Livingstone Centenary exhibition, Tanfield, 1913.
25    See M Stevenson (ed), Thomas Baines: an artist in the service of science in southern Africa, London, 1999.
26    Henry F Norbury, The Naval Brigade in South Africa during the years 1877-78-79, London, 1880, p47.
27    Aurel Schulz and August Hammar, The new Africa: a journey up the Chobe and down the Okovanga rivers. A record of exploration of sport, London, 1897, pp132-133.
28    For a discussion on the usage and origins of the word 'curiosity', see Nicholas Thomas, Entangled objects: exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific, Harvard, 1991, pp125-131.
29    Barbara M Benedict, Curiosity: a cultural history of early modern inquiry, Chicago and London, 2001, pp17-8.
30    Rose Pender, No telegraph; or, a trip to our unconnected colonies, 1878, London, 1879, p77.
31    Sonia Clarke, Zululand at war 1879: the conduct of the Anglo-Zulu war, Johannesburg, 1984, p239.
32    Cornelius Vijn, Cetshwayo's Dutchman: being the private journal of a white trader in Zululand during the British invasion, London, 1880, p72.
33    Melton Prior, Campaigns of a war correspondent, London, 1912, p122.
34    WA Willis and LT Collingridge, The downfall of Lobengula: the cause, history, and effect of the Matabeli war, London, 1894, p130.
35    See Zulu treasures: of kings and commoners/Amagugu kaZulu: Amakhosi nabantukazana, KwaZulu-Natal,1996.
36    Hugh McCalmont, The memoirs of Major-General Sir Hugh McCalmont, London, 1924, pp161-162.
37    HM Bengough, Memories of a soldier's life, London, 1913, p132.
38    Edward D McToy, A brief history of the 13th regiment (PALI) in South Africa during the Transvaal and Zulu difficulties, 1877-8- 9, Devonport, 1880, p89.
39    D Child (ed), The Zulu war journal of Colonel Henry Harford, CB, Pietermaritzburg, 1978, p67.
40    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, pp220-221.
41    Frederick Russell Burnham, Scouting on two continents, New York, 1927, p152.
42    FJ du Toit Spies, 'The mace of Bronkhorstspruit', Yearbook of the Africana Society of Pretoria, 1987, pp15-20.
43    Hugh McCalmont, The memoirs of Major-General Sir Hugh McCalmont, London, 1924, p164.
44    D Child (ed), The Zulu war journal of Colonel Henry Harford, CB, Pietermaritzburg, 1978, p66.
45    PH Butterfield, War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex
(Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89), p77.
46    PH Butterfield, War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex
(Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89), p82, note 48. The tusk is illustrated in PB Boyden, AJ Guy and M Harding, 'Ashes and blood': the British army in South Africa 1975-1914, London, 1999, p251.
47    PH Butterfield, War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89), p44.
48    Catalogue of a loan exhibition of South African sketches and curiosities, Grosvenor House, 1900, p51.
49    See Robert Hope, The Zulu War and the 80th Regiment of Foot, Leek, Staffordshire, 1997, pp79, 186.
50    Sidney L Kasfir, 'Samburu souvenirs: representations of a land in amber' in Unpacking culture: art and commodity in colonial and postcolonial worlds, edited by Ruth B Phillips and Christopher B Steiner, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999, p68.
51    'UK museums face controversial Ethiopian legacy', The Art Newspaper, 151, October 2004, pp15-19.
52    Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land, July 29, 1899, referred to by James Nafziger, 'Protection of cultural heritage in time of war and its aftermath' in IFAR Journal, Vol 6 Nos 1 & 2, 2003.
53    Colonel G Hamilton-Browne, A lost legionary in South Africa, London, 1912, pp58-9.
54    Frederick Russell Burnham, Scouting on two continents, New York, 1927, p152.
55    WH Tomasson, With the irregulars in the Transvaal and Zululand, London, 1881, pp199-205.
56    WH Tomasson, With the irregulars in the Transvaal and Zululand, London, 1881, pp138-139.
57    Major-General WCF Molyneux, Campaigning in South Africa and Egypt, London, 1896, p189.
58    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, p237.
59    Campaigns: Zulu 1879, Egypt 1882, Suakim 1885: being the private journal of Guy C Dawnay, Cambridge,1989, p 71.
60    Peter Warwick, Black people and the South African war 1899- 1902, Cambridge, 1983, pp180-181.
61    SB Spies, Methods of barbarism: Roberts and Kitchener and civilians in the Boer Republics, January 1900 - May 1902, Cape Town, 1977, pp42-47, 120-121, 227-230.
62    'From a trooper's diary', The Critic, June 1934, 2(4), p215.
63    'From a trooper's diary', The Critic, March 1934, 2(3), p188.
64    'From a trooper's diary', The Critic, March 1934, 2(3), p186.
65    Paul H Butterfield: War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89, pp45-6.)
66    Paul H Butterfield: War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89, p46.)
67    Paul H Butterfield: War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89, p47.)
68    Henry F Norbury, The Naval Brigade in South Africa during the years 1877-78-79, London, 1880, p296.
69    Paul H Butterfield: War and peace in South Africa 1879-1881: the writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville, Scripta Africana, 1986-89, p79.)
70    WE Montague, Campaigning in South Africa: reminiscences of an officer in 1879, London, 1880, pp216-217.
71    CE Fripp, 'Reminiscences of the Zulu War', Pall Mall Magazine, 20, January-April 1900, pp547-562.
72    Strange Collection, JPL; reproduced in Africana Notes and News, IV (4), September 1947, p90.
73    Emil Holub, Travels north of the Zambezi, 1885-6, Manchester, 1975, p235.
74    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, pp266-267.
75    WR Ludlow, Zululand and Cetewayo, London, 1882, p130.
76    WR Ludlow, Zululand and Cetewayo, London, 1882, p126.
77    J Theodore Bent, The ruined cities of Mashonaland being a record of excavation and exploration in 1904, London, 1893, p277.
78    J Theodore Bent, The ruined cities of Mashonaland being a record of excavation and exploration in 1904, London, 1893, pp254-255.
79    Melton Prior, Campaigns of a war correspondent, London, 1912, p86.
80    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, pp302-303.
81    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, pp240-241.
82    General Sir Bindon Blood, Four score years and ten: Sir Bindon Blood's reminiscences, London, 1933, p193.
83    Frank N Streatfeild [sic], Kafirland: a ten months' campaign, London, 1879, pp207-208.
84    Emil Holub, Sieben Jahre in Süd-Afrika, Wien, 1881, p326.
85    The chief Sicomy (1800-1883), otherwise spelt Sekhomi or Sekgoma, was chief of the Bamanqwato, also spelt Bamanguato or Ngwato, an offshoot of the Tswana. Sekgoma came to power in 1835 amid internal dissentions about the legitimacy of his succession which continually undermined his position until his death in 1883 (DSAB,  vol 1, pp706-707).
86    RGG Cumming identifies the kobaoba as the long-horned white rhinoceros, distinguished from the common white rhino by the length and position of its anterior horn. The horn 'often exceeds four foot in length'. RGG Cumming, A hunter's life in Africa, 2 vols, London, 1850, vol 1, pp250-1.
87    RGG Cumming, A hunter's life in Africa, 2 vols, London, 1850, vol 1, p334.
88    J Theodore Bent, The ruined cities of Mashonaland being a record of excavation and exploration in 1904, London,1893, p271.
89    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, p253.
90    Thomas B Jenkinson, Amazulu: the Zulus, their past history, manners, customs and language, reprint of 1882 ed, New York, 1969, pp157-158.
91    WR Ludlow, Zululand and Cetewayo, London, 1882, p36.
92    WR Ludlow, Zululand and Cetewayo, London, 1882, p59.
93    Bertram Mitford, Through the Zulu country: its battlefields and its people, London, 1883, pp220-221.
94    Henry F Norbury, The Naval Brigade in South Africa during the years 1877-78-79, London, 1880, p146.
95    Cape Times, 21 August 1901, quoted by P Buckner, 'The royal tour of 1901', SA Historical Journal, November 1999, 41, p342.
96    Catalogue of the gifts and addresses received by Their Royal Highnessess the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York during their visit to the Kings dominions beyond the seas, 1901. Exhibited in the North Gallery, May 1902, London, 1902, items 466-642.
97    See RB Phillips, Trading identities: the souvenir in Native North American art from the northeast, 1700-1900, Seattle, 1998.
98    Herman Charles Bosman, 'The missionary' in Unto dust and other stories, Cape Town, 2002, p104.
99    J Fabian, 'Curios and curiosity: notes on reading Torday and Frobenius', E Schildkrout, and CA Keim (eds), The scramble for art in Central Africa, Cambridge, 1998, p91.
100    Marsha C Bol, 'Defining Lakota tourist art, 1880-1915' in Unpacking culture: art and commodity in colonial and post-colonial worlds, edited by Ruth B Phillips and Christopher B Steiner, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999, p214.
101    ;See M Stevenson and M Graham-Stewart, The Mlungu in Africa, Cape Town, 2003.
102    Fanny Parkes [Mrs Parlby], [Anon] Wanderings of a pilgrim, in search of the picturesque, during four and twenty years in the east; with revelations of life in the zenana, London, 1850, vol 2, p364.
103    Fanny Parkes [Mrs Parlby], [Anon] Wanderings of a pilgrim, vol 2, p370.
104    Fanny Parkes [Mrs Parlby], [Anon] Wanderings of a pilgrim, vol 2, pp447-8.
105    Cape Argus, 30 April 1859.
106    Cape Argus, 30 May 1859.
107    Cape Register, 25 June 1892.
108    Cape Register, 9 July 1892.
109    The Cape Observer, 19 July 1895, p20.
110    Cape Town Industrial exhibition, Official guide, London, 1904-5, p105.
111    This category would appear to be primarily for African artefacts and souvenirs because it expressly excluded ostrich feathers, hides, skins, ivory, horns, karosses or specimens of natural history.
112    Natal almanacs, 1887- 1905.
113    Colonial and Indian exhibition, Catalogue of the exhibits of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, London,1886.
114    JB Currey, Catalogue of the articles contributed to the Paris Exhibition of 1867 by the Cape of Good Hope, London, 1867.
115    WM Peniston, Paris Universal Exhibition: catalogue of contributions from the Colony of Natal, London, 1867.
116    The Stanley and Africa catalogue of exhibits, London, 1890, p9.
117    Quoted by A Coombes, Reinventing Africa, London and New Haven, 1994, pp71; 197-8.
118    For instance, after six months the Colonial and Indian Exhibition closed, and a substantial number of the remaining exhibits and architectural features were sold by auction. With reference to the Indian aspect of the exhibition, see Nicky Levell, Oriental visions: exhibitions, travel and collecting in the Victorian age, London, 2000, pp104-5.
119    Anthony Shelton, (ed), Collectors: expressions of self and other, London, 2001, p208.
120    For a 'list of dealers in curios etc', see Nicky Levell, Oriental visions: exhibitions, travel, and collecting in the Victorian age, London, 2000, Appendix 1.
121     LAD Montague, Weapons and implements of savage races (Australasia, Oceania, and Africa), London,1921,p142.
122    See JCH King, 'WD Webster: dealer and collector, 1868- 1913', unpublished typescript, 1991.
123    WO Oldman, Catalogues of ethnographical specimens, reprinted, London, 1976.
124    Roy Sieber, African textiles and decorative arts, New York, 1974, and African furniture and household objects, Bloomington, c1980.
125    For further discussions of these issues, see Anitra Nettleton, 'Tradition, authenticity and tourist sculpture in 19th and 20th century South Africa' and S Klopper '"Zulu" headrests and figurative carvings: the Brenthurst collection and the art of south- east Africa' in Art and ambiguity: perspectives on the Brenthurst collection of southern African art, Johannesburg, 1991, pp32-57 and 80-103.