Battle of Blood River - Legacy

Legacy

Popular Afrikaner interpretations of the Battle of Blood River (bolstered by sympathetic English historians such as G.M. Theal) played a central role in fostering ethnic nationalism among white Afrikaners. They claimed that the Battle demonstrated God's intervention, and hence their divine right to exist as an independent people. The claim in the official guidebook of the Voortrekker Monument (unveiled during the centenary celebrations of the Great Trek on 16 December 1949) that Afrikaners were a nation of heroes exemplifies the conclusions drawn from such events. In time, the Afrikaner came to consider the site and the commemoration of the day as sacred.

The conflict between Dingane and the Trekkers continued for one more year after the Battle of Blood River. The idea of a decisive victory may have been planted in Pretorius' mind by a Zulu prisoner, who said that most of Dingane's warriors had either been killed or had fled. The same prisoner led some of the Trekker party into a trap at the White Umfolozi River, eleven days after the battle at Ncome River. This time the Zulu were victorious. Only when Dingane's brother, Mpande, openly joined the Trekker side with his sizeable army was Dingane finally defeated in January 1840.

Historian S.P. Mackenzie doubts the reported number of Zulu deaths. He compares Zulu casualties at Ncome to battles at Italeni, Isandlwana, and Rorke's Drift. Mackenzie acknowledges that the casualty count was not impossible. Yet, in a similar victory on 15 October 1836 by Trekkers under Hendrik Potgieter over some 9,000 Matabele, the latter suffered only 350 casualties. In 1879, 600 British soldiers with breech-loading rifles causing 2,000 Zulu casualties, perhaps 1,000 killed over three hours before being overrun.

200 indigenous people helped the Afrikaners.