Extractive European Imperial forces often justified colonization as a crusade, bringing civilization to a timeless and barbaric continent. One way of validating this justification was to create a narrative, or a history of the people being colonized, which allowed a European audience to excuse invasions as an attempt to resituate savage peoples away from their own barbaric past. This paper examines the Zulu Kingdom in southeastern Africa that rose to power after 1816 under the rule of Shaka KaSenzangakona, a controversial and powerful figure whose military and political innovations consolidated loosely affiliated peoples into a more centralized and militarized society. This article examines historical record of Zulu history to identify women who articulated agency in the political and religious spheres of Zulu history. This will be accomplished through identifying and examining the roles of specific elite members of the royal family from what is generally considered the rise of the Zulu nation in 1816 until its eventual fall in the early twentieth century. The paper will first detail limitations of sources and explain current academic understanding, and the will progress to an analysis of specific figures in chronological order.
