networks were far more resilient, and their political systems were far more
durable than those of the Khoisan. They were thus able to resist the invad-
ers more effectivelythan the hunters and herders had done. Furthermore,
even though they, too, were eventually subjected and the world they had
known vanished for ever, they did not disintegrate. They maintained their
cohesion as organized communities. They adapted their culture and their
social, economic, and political institutions to the new order. They occupied
substantial blocks of their ancestral land. What is more, they continued to
be far more numerous than the white invaders.
In 1870, the outcome in southeast Africa was still in doubt. Whites had
made their presence felt as far north as the Limpopo River, had defeated
many of the farming communities in a series of separate campaigns, had
assumed ownership of much of the best land in the territories they called the
Ciskei, Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, and had drawn
many of the indigenous inhabitants of the region into the labor market. But
the white settlers were few in number, their polities were frail, and their
pockets of settlement were bordered by autonomous African polities, in-