ABSTRACT
The History of the colony of Natal, more than that of any other colony, is the history of native policy. Yet for a whole generation that policy had been concealed beneath the mantle of Theophilus Shepstone, Secretary for Native Affairs. The need of native policy in his view was a reduction in the amount of land held by the natives and a system of taxation calculated to force them more freely into the labour market. The detribalized natives could be more easily Christianized than tribes bound together by their own laws and sustained by some measure still of economic independence. Shepstone had hoped to obtain a thoroughgoing Crown Colony government by reducing the number of elective members. It is assumed that the leading role in effecting an early South African confederation in which the local difficulties of Natal and the diamond fields and the Republics would become the concern of a central Government.
