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| Title: | The Expansion of a Pseudo-Ethnicity in the Eastern Cape: Reconsidering the Fingo 'Exodus' of 1865 |
| Author: | Stapleton, Timothy J. |
| Year: | 1996 |
| Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
| Volume: | 29 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 233-250 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | Fingo ethnicity Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/220517 |
| Abstract: | Despite their ideological differences, the various schools of South African history have perpetuated the belief that the Fingo people of South Africa's eastern Cape originated from the remnants of several chiefdoms which had fled Natal in the 1820s in order to avoid the ravages of the 'mfecane' caused by the expansion of the Zulu Kingdom. After travelling southwest through the Transkei, these refugees were subjugated by the Xhosa and later rescued by the British in 1835. The Fingo 'exodus' of 1865 supposedly represented another colonial humanitarian gesture which saw a willing return of these people to the depopulated Transkei. However, recent revisionists have questioned the validity of both the 'mfecane' and the nature of Fingo origins. They claim that the Fingo were not a distinct ethnic group, but rather a colonial creation designed to meet settler requirements for labour. The 1865 'exodus' was really a simultaneous expulsion of Africans from the Cape Colony and an extension of colonial hegemony over others already in the Transkei. Notes, ref. |
