Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires

This is the first full-length study of the political economy of one of the African states which were formed in the course of the nineteenth-century Zulu revolution. The early chapters examine the evolution of the Swazi state and the dynamics of its stratified systems, paying particular attention to the ‘layering’ of inequality through marriage and inheritance patterns, and the simultaneous integration of age regiments and the elaboration of a national ideology based on the Swazi royalty. Dr Bonner then sets the Swazi state in the wider context of south-eastern Africa and discusses its relations with the surrounding Boer societies. The later chapters analyse the role played by the great mining companies and their white concessionaires in the partition of southern Africa and in bringing about the dissolution of the Swazi state.