20,000 fighting men. The colonial government mustered nearly as many,
including Mfengu, Gqunukhwebe, colonial volunteers, a few Khoikhoi,
and 8,600 British regular troops. At the outset, as in previous conflicts, the
Xhosa took the offensive,destroying the military villages along the Cape
colonial frontier and forcing-colonists to abandon their farms deep inside
the colony. But, as in every previous war since the Zuurveld was cleared in
181 I - I 2, the imperial forces eventually prevailed by systematically de-
stroying Xhosa food supplies.l '
Further forced removals and relocations followed that war. "Loyal"
Africans were given relatively generous landholdings, whereas the Ngqika
were confined to a small tract of land, and much of the new colony of
British Kaffraria was thrown open to white settlement. Assuming officein
December 1854, Governor Sir George Grey, a high-minded soldier who,
unlike the egregious Harry Smith, had serious intellectual interests but also
possessed the unquestioning cultural arrogance of the ruling class of Vic-
torian Britain, presided over a program inspired by his recent dealings with
the Maori in New Zealand. The chiefs became salaried officials,responsi-
ble to white magistrates. Their people were to be "civilized." Missions,