BLOG 1: INTRODUCTION

Propaganda (noun): dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion (Brittanica.com). 

Let’s begin with an admission: I’m no historian. By profession I’m an accountant who has an inclination to be a writer. One of the books I’m currently working on has the working title ‘The Feudalists’, a fictionalised investigation of the plottings of devout confederationalists – those who wanted the British Empire amalgamated under a single Imperial Parliament ‒ in England of the 1880s. Part of the Feudalists’ machinations involved the promotion of their ‘Cape-to-Cairo’ strategy – arranging things so that the British Empire’s domains stretched the full length of Africa – this one of the reasons for the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, during which the fighting at Rorke’s Drift in January of that year played a crucial part (crucial not so much from a military point-of-view but certainly with regards to my story!). As a consequence, I’ve spent a deal of time studying and analysing books/ articles/papers written about the action.

Now accountants get a bad press, generally thought of as being rather boring and unimaginative types but one thing we are rather good at is reconciliation, an accounting process that compares and contrasts two sets of records to ensure the information they contain is correct and in agreement. This is a process I have applied to my study of the battle of Rorke’s Drift, my ‘reconciliations’ involving the comparison of the many and varied (very varied!) accounts of what happened during the evening of the 22^nd and the morning of the 23^rd January, 1879.

These reconciliations produced what I’ve called ‘Contentions’ ‒ the ‘did he really do that?’ sort of questions ‒ regarding the battle, these going some way to identifying things that are inconsistent, questionable or patently wrong and suggesting an alternative interpretation of what actually happened. Some Contentions are quite trivial whilst others are pretty substantial, but taken together they’ve led me to question the widely accepted story of how the action at Rorke’s Drift unfolded, how it was prosecuted and how it was reported.

What I must stress is that I am in no way disparaging the courage of either the British troops or the Zulu warriors – both displayed incredible fortitude and heroism during the fighting at Rorke’s Drift.

Nevertheless, the conclusion I reached is that the manipulating of the ‘Chard Reports’ which form the basis of virtually every book ever written on the subject of Rorke’s Drift was a key element in a cover-up designed to protect Lieutenant General Chelmsford from the consequences of his gross mismanagement of the British army and its resulting defeat by the Zulu at Isandlwana. Several writers have speculated that Lieutenant Chard – officer commanding the station at Rorke’s Drift on the evening of the 22^nd and the morning of the 23^rd January 1879 – wasn’t the author of the Reports but while they major on the ‘who’ they shy away from the ‘what’: what were the facts contained in the Reports which were manipulated.

What I’ve found during my research is that the adage, ‘history repeats itself and historians repeat each other’, has never been more slavishly followed than in the writings on the subject of Rorke’s Drift, writers on the subject building on the misconceptions of those who went before. My hope is that my Contentions are numerous enough and provocative enough to overturn some of the more popular shibboleths, to warrant the two Chard Reports being re-classified as propaganda and to justify this Blog being entitled, ‘Rorke’s Drift: Fake News 1879’.