White Chief, Black Lords explores the tensions and contradictions between the colonial civilizing mission and the practice of indirect rule. While colonial states professed that their guiding
imperative was to transform colonized societies and bring them within "civilized" norms, fiscal limitations resulted in ruling through indigenous authorities and customs. In this book, Thomas
McClendon analyzes this deep contradiction by looking at several crises and key turning points in the early decades of colonial rule in the British colony of Natal, later part of South Africa.
He focuses a keen eye on the long tenure of Theophilus Shepstone as that colony's Secretary for Native affairs, examining his interactions with subject African communities. In a series of case
studies, including high drama over rebellions by African "chiefs" and their followers and intense debates over the control of witchcraft, White Chief, Black Lords shows that these colonial
imperatives led to a self-defeating conundrum. In the process of attempting to rule through African leaders and norms yet to discipline and transform African subjects, the colonial state
inevitably was itself transformed and became, in part, an African state. McClendon concludes by spotlighting the continuing importance of these unresolved contradictions in post-apartheid South
Africa. Thomas McClendon is a professor of history at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.
