Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa: Oral Traditions and History, 1400-1830

Examines indigenous oral traditions and histories in order to explain the factors propelling sociopolitical consolidation and the emergence of chiefdoms and kingdoms in nineteenth-century southeastern Africa.

This study traces the social and political history of the peoples of early precolonial southeastern Africa, including the regions of modern KwaZulu-Natal, Swaziland, southern Mozambique from Maputo Bay southward, and Lesotho. Theemergence in the early nineteenth century of well-known so...