View Across the River: Harriette Colenso and the Zulu Struggle against Imperialism

The Colenso Controversy' which centred round Bishop Colenso of Natal split the Victorian Church in Britain. This narrative aims to show how after its conquest, the Zulu kingdom was destroyed by the imperial policies of divide and rule, and how the Colenso family, especially the Bishop's eldest daughter, Harriette, took the lead in resisting colonial exploitation and imperial domination. This powerful and passionate narrative completes the story Jeff Guy began in his earlier books The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom and The Heretic. North America: University Press of Virginia; South Africa: David Philip(NAB)

Table of Contents:
Preface - Warring houses - The inheritance - Dividing the inheritance - The dispute - A sort of paradise - The quest - Breaking down - Endnotes - Bibliography

Review :
The View Across the River cements Guy's place in the pantheon of South African historians. It is history in the grand manner, brilliantly written and as compellingly readable as a novel. Narrative and argument march side by side from start to finish.While Guy has a reputation as a formidable theorist of history, this time he has kicked away all the scaffolding, allowing his story to fill the picture frame. Tragedy unrelentingly stalks the main characters. - Some years ago now, Cowling argued that biography was almost always misleading as it abstracted a man from his setting and implied that connections were linear rather than circular. However, Jeff Guy, who has been working on Zulu history for three decades, takes a new history sort of approach in this work, which is in part biography, and he sensitively integrates the individual (particularly Harriette Colenso) into her context, recognizing the need for multiple narratives, and drawing together the various threads in a complex analytical framework. Thus, the book under review continues the history of the Zulu begun in Guy's earlier books, and extends it up to the late 1890s, while concentrating in particular on Harriette Colenso (one of the daughters of the controversial bishop of Natal) and her own active role as an opponent of imperialism. It is a fascinating account, providing insights into the society and politics both of this part of southern Africa and of England in the heyday of empire...this is not only an impressive piece of research, but also an enthralling piece of historical writing. - This is essentially a biography of Harriette, a remarkable late-Victorian woman. Based on thorough research it provides an intriguing insight into the political role of women in late-Victorian colonial society ... The study is well documented with a useful bibliography.