In his new book, Graham Dominy suggests that in the current South African atmosphere, history has become as racially divided as South African society was under segregation and apartheid, with ‘white’ history being largely seen as irrelevant to the black population, and vice versa. The readjustment of entrenched ideas about a racialized past is a large task for a book about a small fort, but Dominy succeeds in writing a local history of the racial and cultural interactions of what was the earliest British imperial fort in Natal Colony.
The various regiments stationed at Fort Napier from its founding in 1842–3 until it was decommissioned in the early 1920s, established a constant British military presence on a sometimes unstable frontier with Zulu and Afrikaners. The regiments also served as a tie between English settlers and the home country, and helped reinforce the idea of the British Empire. The book is not concerned with the history of battles or of conquest. Instead, Dominy investigates the different social and cultural influences that the regiments stationed at the fort exerted on Natal society. Dominy's central story is that the regiments at the fort both reflected and contributed to the character of the multicultural society that emerged in the region.
Napier Fort was founded for military purposes. The British had ousted the short-lived Voortrekker Republic of Natalia, in order to prevent continued waves of African refugees crossing the border into the Cape Colony and roiling British settlers and African communities there. Initially, British control was far from absolute: the Zulu Kingdom was still alive and well, and other African chiefs maintained their autonomy too. Additionally, many of the Voortrekker settlers remained and frequently challenged British control. The Fort was not originally intended as a permanent outpost, the garrison stationed there was considered temporary right up until its disbandment in the first year of the First World War.
The fort was located just outside of the small white settlement of Pietermaritzburg, and its principal task was to show the imperial flag. This element of performance by a relatively small group of British imperial soldiers was a component of what Dominy describes as ‘parades’ and ‘panics’ (Chapter Five). In the era before the defeat of the Zulu state in 1881, the Napier regiment was occasionally paraded in front of visiting Zulu dignitaries as a way of impressing them with British military power and of calming local white settlers’ panics about living in a region overwhelmingly populated by Africans who remained outside of British colonial control. Militarily, the garrison also waged punitive expeditions against individual Africans who were thought to be insufficiently compliant with local white authorities. But although regiments stationed at the Fort participated in all the major conflicts in the region — from engagements with the Zulu through the tensions surrounding the First World War — they never played a decisive role in them, in terms of military might.
The major themes that Dominy explores more deeply are in the realm of social history. The most important question he takes up is the contribution of military mores to the construction of masculinity in local white society. He notes the divide between upper-class British officers and the sometimes unruly and often drunk — at least in their spare time — enlisted men. Officers, with their polite manners and sporting habits, were frequently honored guests in local social circles and occasionally married into local white settler society. Settlers were desperate to keep up with the newest cosmopolitan British trends and saw these officers as emissaries of Victorian civilization. The presence of the military, Dominy argues, helped to construct ideas of Victorian masculinity and culture, complete with operetta performances, polo matches, and rigid gender norms.
The book is somewhat less successful in exploring the relationships between the regiments and the local African population. There is a long section on the employment of African laborers by the garrison, and Dominy touches on the development of new gender roles for Africans emerging from their contacts with the regiments. Some Africans became soldiers in the ‘Native levies’, while others worked as day-laborers maintaining the fort or tending the garrison's horses and cattle. Dominy also briefly notes the garrison's impact on some of the ritual and dress associated with Isaiah Shembe's church, the Church of Nazareth, and on the Zulu royal family. The book's discussion of these influences is intriguing, but these topics are treated suggestively, not fully explored.
Overall, the effect of the book is that of a kaleidoscope. Dominy shows a command of a number of different historical literatures: he traces the similarities between Fort Napier and other far-flung military outposts of the British Empire in Halifax and Gibraltar; he demonstrates the impact on the composition of the regiments of Irish political violence over Home Rule; and he discusses at length issues of discipline in the British military and changing ideas of punishment. The engagement with this broad range of topics makes for an interesting read, but it dilutes the central story of the social ramifications of Fort Napier as an imperial outpost.
