Editing Shaka (section)

===Biographical sources===
[[File:Zuluisandoob3.jpg|right|thumb|350px|Shaka's methods reached their high point during the Zulu victory at ''Isandhlwana''. Regimental deployments and lines of the attack showed his classic template at work.{{sfn|Knight|McBride|1989|p=49}}]]

Scholarship in recent years has revised views of the sources on Shaka's reign. The earliest are two eyewitness accounts written by European adventurer-traders who met Shaka during the last four years of his reign. [[Nathaniel Isaacs]] published his ''Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa'' in 1836, creating a picture of Shaka as a degenerate and pathological monster, which survives in modified forms to this day. Isaacs was aided in this by [[Henry Francis Fynn]], whose diary (actually a rewritten collage of various papers) was edited by [[James Stuart (1868–1942)|James Stuart]] only in 1950.{{sfn|Isaacs|1836|p=}} Their accounts may be balanced by the rich resource of oral histories collected around 1900 by the same James Stuart, now published in six volumes as ''The James Stuart Archive''. Stuart's early 20th century work was continued by D. McK. Malcolm in 1950. These and other sources such as A.T. Bryant gives us a more Zulu-centered picture. Most popular accounts are based on E.A. Ritter's novel ''Shaka Zulu'' (1955), a pot boiling romance that was re-edited into something more closely resembling a history. John Wright (history professor at [[University of KwaZulu-Natal]], [[Pietermaritzburg]]), [[Julian Cobbing]] and Dan Wylie ([[Rhodes University]], [[Grahamstown]]) are among a number of writers who have modified these stories.{{sfn|Hamilton|1998|pp=7–35}}

Various modern historians writing on Shaka and the Zulu point to the uncertain nature of Fynn and Isaac's accounts of Shaka's reign. A general reference work in the field is Donald Morris's "The Washing of The Spears", which notes that the sources, as a whole, for this historical era are not the best. Morris references a large number of sources, including Stuart, and A. T. Bryant's "Olden Times in Zululand and Natal", which is based on four decades of interviews of tribal sources. After sifting through these sources and noting their strengths and weaknesses, Morris generally credits Shaka with a large number of military and social innovations.{{sfn|Morris|1994|pp=617–620}} This is the general consensus in the field.{{CN|date=February 2023}}

A 1998 study by historian Carolyn Hamilton summarizes much of the scholarship on Shaka towards the dawn of the 21st century in areas ranging from ideology, politics and culture, to the use of his name and image in a popular South African [[Amusement park|theme park]], ''Shakaland.'' It argues that in many ways, the image of Shaka has been "invented" in the modern era according to whatever agenda persons hold. This "imagining of Shaka" it is held, should be balanced by a sober view of the historical record, and allow greater scope for the contributions of indigenous African discourse.{{sfn|Hamilton|1998|pp=3–47}}

Military historians of the Zulu War describe Zulu fighting methods and tactics, including authors [[Ian Knight (historian)|Ian Knight]] and Robert Edgerton. General histories of Southern Africa include Noel Mostert's "Frontiers" and a detailed account of the results from the Zulu expansion, J.D. Omer-Cooper's "The Zulu Aftermath", which advances the traditional Mfecane/Difaqane theory.{{sfn|Raugh|2011|p=}}