‘Good News from Zululand’

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Illustration of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift

Anonymous

1879

Wood engraving, unknown engraver

Penny Illustrated Paper (1 March 1879): no page number.

This illustration typifies the propaganda imagery that surrounded the reporting of the Anglo-Zulu War. [Commentary continues below.]

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke [Click on image to enlarge it.]

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it and (2) link to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one.]

The caption announces that there is ‘good news’ from Natal and emphasises the fact that the Britons’ stand at Rorke’s Drift was ‘heroic’, while ignoring the catastrophe of Isandlwana. Here it is purely a matter of plucky Brits seeing off the savages; the representation of the Zulus is purely stereotypical, employing the generalizing visual tropes applied to Black foreigners, while the British are shown doing a sturdy job of firing their rifles. This is the sanitized, domesticated vision presented to the home audience, an approach symbolized by the figure of the woman reading the paper in the bottom right. There is no mention of some of the physical horrors of the encounter (with some British soldiers having the remains of the Zulus’ brains on their costumes as they fired directly into their faces at close quarters.)

Bibliography

The Penny Illustrated Paper (1879).

Created 25 February 2025