In 1988, Julian Cobbing published an article in this journal that questioned the conventional wisdom regarding the consolidation of Shaka's Zulu kingdom and its aftermath (referred to as the mfecane). Cobbing argued that raiding and aggression from the Cape Colony to the west and from slave trading at Delagoa Bay to the east initiated a wave of violence across southern Africa. Instead of causing the violence, Shaka's kingdom was a defensive response to it. Dan Wylie's Myth of Iron, which was published in 2006 and is now available in paperback, is the most thorough defense of Cobbing's thesis to date.

To reverse the widespread belief in the mfecane, revisionist historians have had to demonstrate the unreliability of both the eyewitness accounts of the European Port Natal traders (especially those of Henry Fynn and Nathaniel Isaacs) and also Zulu oral traditions. Wylie details the racist stereotypes, clichés, repetitions, and contradictions of the Port Natal traders' accounts. He also claims that Zulu oral traditions have been irredeemably infected by the conventional mythology – and hence he does not utilize any recently conducted interviews. But Myth of Iron is more than a criticism of prevailing sources and myths. Wylie attempts a careful historical reconstruction by introducing underused and untapped sources. He relies on a set of lengthy interviews conducted by the Natal administrator and chronicler of the Zulu, James Stuart, at the beginning of the twentieth century, supposedly before the conventional mythology molded oral accounts. While the interviews do not confirm the details of the revisionist case, they increase its plausibility by offering a more qualified view of the Zulu consolidation and aftermath.

Using these and other sources – accompanied by some speculation – Wylie concludes that Shaka was a decisive and strong leader, not a megalomaniac. He was responsible for occasional acts of violence, but not the widespread cruelty of which the white traders accused him. When genocidal violence undeniably came from the Zulu, Wylie blames uncontrollable amabutho regiments rather than Shaka himself. Shaka brought innovations to political and military formations, especially in the regimental system, but this was not a military revolution and it had nothing to do with the short stabbing spear. The Zulu state developed mostly as a defensive response to Ndwandwe aggression from the north, which was in turn connected to the Delagoa Bay slave trade. Only after the decisive defeat of the Ndwandwe in 1826 did Shaka's polity initiate more aggressive raiding and expansion, managed through an ‘autocratic partnership’ (pp. 270–7) with local lords (izinduna). Even then, Wylie contends, Shaka attempted to incorporate his enemies rather than kill them. Overall, Wylie presents the most sympathetic portrait of Shaka that his evidence allows. The villains of the story are the European traders, who fraudulently claimed that Shaka ceded land to them, stole Shaka's gifts to the Cape Colony, and were responsible for cattle and slave raids. They blamed Shaka for their own nasty activities while presenting themselves as a benign influence on a savage despot. Instead of the local agency of a single king, Wylie convincingly demonstrates that the expansion of slaving from Delagoa Bay and political and commercial influences from the west lay behind the violent disruptions of nineteenth-century southern Africa.

The book is organized in fourteen chronological chapters, beginning with a sketch of Zulu origins and an overview of the region c.1780 and ending with Shaka's death in 1828. Each chapter offers a close and lucid interrogation of the appropriate evidence, fascinating for historians familiar with the sources and period. But with Wylie's guidance, historical details obscure to many of us – the tensions between the Zulu and Mthethwa, the battles with Zwide's and Sekhunyane's Ndwandwe, Shaka's relationship with his mother and father, the raids on the Mpondo to the south, Shaka's ties to the Port Natal traders, and Zulu overtures to the Cape Colony – become lively historical controversies.

The density of the empirical analysis means that the reader has to persevere to reach some of the thematic discussions. Analysis of the Zulu political economy and the role of women, for example, only appears in Chapter 10, rituals in Chapter 11, and witchcraft in Chapter 12. Some of the most interesting and contentious historical issues, such as the ‘mfecane debate’ (p. 437), ‘cannibal tales’ (p. 223), or ‘Shaka's birthdate’ (p. 101), are scattered in pithy boxes throughout the text. This somewhat haphazard and occasionally frustrating organization is more than made up for by Wylie's intelligent discussion, demonstrating a deep and sympathetic understanding of nineteenth-century Zulu society and politics.

Wylie and a host of post-Cobbing historians should begin to dent the iron myth of Shaka. At least in the college classroom, South African history can no longer avoid the decisive demotion of the mfecane and of Shaka. Those who present South African history as tied to regional and global processes, rather than a remarkable South African exceptionalism, will find an ally in this thorough and lively study.