‘Young men like these … ’: The Volunteer Corps and the Emergence of the Settler Community in Colonial Natal

Abstract

In his description of the men of Natal's volunteer corps who fought against the Hlubi at Bushman's Pass in 1873, Jeff Guy contended that Natal's volunteers attempted ‘to demonstrate their abilities as men of the frontier and […] to defend the more vulnerable’. This paper will attempt to clarify Guy's argument that volunteering was ‘a feature of settler society’. Acting as a continuation of the military traditions and systems that were gaining popularity in Britain, volunteering became a means through which the white citizens of Natal were able to take part in the protection of the colony while remaining viable members of the colonial civilian community. Because of their consistent and sizable place within the white colonial community and the growing concerns for colonial violence in Natal, the volunteers became the idealised form of white everyman's contributions to the protection of the colonial state. The defence and security of the colonial state, in the eyes of many within Natal, rested on the ‘gallant’ men of the volunteer corps. However, the practicality of this assumption, though largely unfounded, still resulted in the volunteer corps holding an important place within the colonial settler consciousness.