First Matabele War
| First Matabele War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Matabele Wars | |||||||||
 The Battle of the Shangani (25 October 1893), as depicted by Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. (1856–1927) |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 British South Africa CompanyTswana (Bechuana) |
Ndebele Kingdom | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Cecil Rhodes Leander Starr Jameson Major Allan Wilson † Major Patrick Forbes Khama III |
King Lobengula † Mjaan, chief inDuna |
||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 750 Company troops 1000 Tswana |
80,000 spearmen 20,000 riflemen |
||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| ca. 100 | Over 10,000 | ||||||||
The First Matabele War was fought between 1893 and 1894 in the country today called Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele (Matabele) Kingdom. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, had tried to avoid outright war with the company's pioneers because he and his advisors were mindful of the destructive power of European-produced weapons on traditional Matabele impis (units of Zulu warriors) attacking in massed ranks. Lobengula had 80,000 spearmen and 20,000 riflemen, armed with nine-pound Martini-Henrys, which were modern arms at that time. However, poor training meant that these were not used effectively. The British South Africa Company had no more than 750 troops in the British South Africa Company's Police, with an undetermined number of possible colonial volunteers and an additional 700 Tswana (Bechuana) allies. Cecil Rhodes, who was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and Leander Starr Jameson, the Administrator of Mashonaland also tried to avoid war to prevent loss of confidence in the future of the territory. Matters came to a head when Lobengula approved a raid to forcibly extract tribute from a Mashona chief in the district of the town of Fort Victoria, which inevitably led to a clash with the Company.
The British government agreed that the British South Africa Company would administer the territory stretching from the Limpopo to the Zambezi under royal charter. Queen Victoria signed the charter in 1889. Cecil Rhodes used this document in 1890 to justify sending the Pioneer Column, a group of settlers protected by well-armed British South Africa Company's Police (BSAP) and guided by the big game hunter Frederick Selous, through Matabeleland and into Shona territory to establish Fort Salisbury (now Harare).
...
Wikipedia