AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
attacking their food supplies. Time after time, Afrikaner commandos and
British regiments brought Africans to their knees by systematically destroy-
ing their homes, crops, and grain reserves, seizing their livestock, and
turning their women and children into refugees. With their superior econ-
omy, which can accumulate and store wealth in a variety of forms, they
were able to feed themselves from commissariats carried in ox-drawn
wagons.
Some white settlers predicted that the African societies would disinte-
grate as the Khoisan in the southwestern part of Southern Africa and the
aboriginal Indians in North America were doing. They 'werewrong. Unlike
the Khoisan and the American Indians, the African farmers were already
conditioned to the diseases brought from Europe. Smallpox and measles,
which took a heavy toll of the Khoisan and the American Indians, do not
seem to have affected the African farmers much more severely than they
affected the white settlers.? The African farming societies, moreover, were
far more populous, their economy was far more complex, their social
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-