Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers

"'Fort Napier : Outpost of the British Colonial State in Natal, 1843-1914' is a social history of the British garrison at Fort Napier, from its establishment in 1843 to its departure for the Western Front at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The garrison remained at Fort Napier for seventy-one years, far longer than garrisons in other parts of the empire. Author Graham Dominy argues that because of the garrison's relative isolation and weakness, it remained 'temporary' in the eyes of influential British military personnel for decades, never manifesting as an effective instrument of imperial power. While the troops' presence ironically played a significant role in undermining the ethos and ideology of the imperial state, the cultural, political and economic methods of influence that the garrison used to compensate for their 'temporary' status have done much to shape modern South Africa"-- "Small and isolated in the Colony of Natal, Fort Napier was long treated like a temporary outpost of the expanding British Empire. Yet British troops manned this South African garrison for over seventy years. Tasked with protecting colonists, the fort became even more significant as an influence on, and reference point for, settler society. Graham Dominy's Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontier reveals the unexamined but pivotal role of Fort Napier in the peacetime public dramas of the colony. Its triumphalist colonial-themed pageantry belied colonists's worries about their own vulnerability. As Dominy shows, the cultural, political, and economic methods used by the garrison compensated for this perceived weakness. Settler elites married their daughters to soldiers to create and preserve an English-speaking oligarchy. At the same time, garrison troops formed the backbone of a consumer market that allowed colonists to form banking and property interests that consolidated their control"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.