ABSTRACT
The interior of Africa was mainly in the hands of African people, whose hostility, combined with the rigors of tropical diseases, kept European penetration to a minimum. There were also called "Kaffir Wars" between Britain and the Xhosa people, which troubled the eastern frontier of Cape Province in South Africa from the Napoleonic era down to the eve of the Zulu War of 1879. The Ashanti army most closely resembled the feudal levies of the European Middle Ages, in that most of its manpower was assembled at the outbreak of war from troops raised by provincial warlords. West Africa's largest single state in the nineteenth century, the Sokoto Caliphate of Northern Nigeria, was the product of a series of Muslim crusades or jihads in the early 1800s. Some credit for the reorganization of the Zulu army must go to Dingiswayo, Shaka's commander and predecessor as king.
