How would you have won as Zulus against British?

>It took until partway through WW1 for British commanders to actually understand how to attack a fortified position.

Why do people act like any of the major powers had a fucking clue what they were doing until like 1917

The Zulus were historically all about pitched battles with large, sweeping flanking manoeuvres. It was what they trained for, what their entire doctrine and equipment sets were based around. They were a pastoral culture and their settlements didn't have walls or much experience with fieldworks, so a defensive stratergy would be utterly useless. Ambush was pretty much the only string to their bow and only really worked until the British actually started taking them seriously.

For the notion that the British were atrocious attackers, contrast the Battle of Ulundi; where British units advanced in a hollow square formation and were able to force an engagement with a larger force of Zulus and utterly crush it, despite being ambushed several times during their advance.

I think you are reading with too much hindsight. Trenchworks equiped with rifles or less were likely to be taken by storm, as they were during the Anglo-Maori wars and the sieges of Sevastopol, as it wsa impossibly to keep up a steady stream of suppressing fire. Tactics of the time hadn't really changed much since the Napoleonic era. It was machineguns, the emphasis of marksmenship over volley fire and ground churned up by artillery that made trenches such a hard counter to infantry advances.

1) acquire guns
Get them by isolating and destroying single regiments in base camp, middle of the night, etc. Kill them all, and take their guns and ammunition. Learn how to use the weapons from captured enemy. Constantly ambush british units at their most vulnerable, acquiring more and more guns and munitions. Make raids on supply depots to stock up on gunpowder and bullets, try and take a few heavy weapons like cannons, gatling guns, etc when you can.

2) intensify and demoralize
Find out who your best shots are and give the guns to them, and continue the ambushes, only now you can attack bigger and bigger units since you also have guns now, opening up possibilities on sneak attacks. At the same time, infiltrate the servants of the British with some of your most fanatic folowers, try and get them to assassinate british officers and businessmen. Remember that at this time, the British would have to take months to send reinforcements down to africa, and just as long to send a message back home that they need help, giving you another advantage, since your men are right here.

3) support
If you have been successful so far, nearby tribes and European powers that are enemies of the british, such as france, may become interested in helping you. Wiping out units, successful assassinations, and recaptured towns will not only boost morale but bring more people to your cause. Spread word about the atrocities or the british, lie if you have to, create an image of you as a peaceful people living off the land resisting against evil oppressors

4) withdrawal
Hopefully if things have gone well, the British will realise that the possible resource gains from the area are not worth the massive amounts of casualties and funds to fight an insurgency in a fiercely hostile land.

Anything you kommandos would add to this? Anything you'd change?

>1870s
>Britain and France enemies

Stopped reading

Yeah I fucked that up, whatever. Replace France with some other power that doesn't like the brits

Nobody helped the Boers and they were kicking Britain’s ass for a while. Who the fucks going to step in for a bunch of bloody blacks?

Yeah because the british will just allow you to continue capturing and killing small groups of soldiers. I know the were kind of up tight but not excactly idiots. You can't expect to do the same thing for months on end and not expect them to change routines.

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Other African tribes/countries or the arab civs might.

Well you could just adapt to the new routines, focus more on base camps and docks or something if they start avoiding ambush routes and keeping better guard

>other African tribes
Mostly hated the zulus because the zulus were jingoistic assholes

>the arab civs might
Either controlled by Britain or the Ottomans and what could they do anyway? Send some fucking camels?

There is basically no way to win a direct engagement. A victory in a pitched battle is impossible to achieve, therefore trying to force a withdrawal is pretty much all that can be done.

Fabian stratergy time.

1) Move my capital. Drive the herds further north and the people along with it, deeper into the interior. The fighting men will stay behind. Sacking a capital is very hard to do when said capital isn't where you expect it to be. Whatever cannot be taken with me will be burned to deny its use to the enemy.
2) Water sources not being actively used by my men will be poisoned to attempt to disrupt the usefulness of enemy cavalry.
3) Break my force down into smaller units. Large blocks of 1500+ men are hard ot supply in the long term; units will instead be no more than 500 strong and at least partially living off forage.
4) Direct engagements will be avoided at all costs. I will use the superior manoeuvrability of my forces to keep the British foot running around whilst suffering from disease and climatic conditions they are ill suited for. Strikes against this force will be opportunistic; large-scale movements will eventually cause tailbacks as units fall out of formation, or the artillery and baggage trains get bogged down in the environment.
5) Where possible enemy cavalry units of the advanced scout will be ambushed and attacked, but only where conditions are favourable to me; river crossings especially. Zulus were famous for their training, they could outrun the British for months. But no man can outrun a horse.
6) If enemy cavalry and scouts are reduced enough to allow for it, attacks on British foraging parties will follow. Defeat-in-detail will be practiced here.
6) A recognition that a long-term goal is simply delay. Sickness will do much of the work for me, and eventually the British will either have to withdraw due to a lack of clear objectives and mounting illnesses, or surge in force and burn through their supplies quicker.

>Move my capital. Drive the herds further north and the people along with it, deeper into the interior

Congratulations, the British just achieved their objective, you’ve retreated into the interior and no longer threaten the British protectorates.

Congratulations

And my forces, that would otherwise have been expended trying to defend the indefensible, are still in the field. They might march on the land, but they don't own it until those troops are defeated.

Granted, that would be just a matter of time. There is basically no way for the Zulus to 'win' long-term without retreating or ceding their independence.

Not be black.

Why do the Zulus get wanked so damn hard? The Sotho put up a way better fight against colonization and actually won. They literally protected both their land and the right to bear arms against a foreign foe.

>How would you have won as Zulus against British?
Get Boers to fight them instead

truly a weapon to surpass Metal Gear

offer poison tea.

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It worked with the Ethiopians

Arabs gave their support when the Nubians and other Sudanese resisted the British

That only worked against Native Americans because they had no exposure to Old World diseases. Africans had smallpox and measles already so biological warfare wouldn't have been very effective

fpbp

wait til night. creep into their fort while half of them are asleep. alternatively, wait for backup.

Becouse most of such posters are american who see ww1 purely through the lambs led to slaughter narritive put through by various brit poets with no further understanding of how all the other powers took far higher casualties in the war.

/thread

This

Main reason france had huge problems with subduing algeria in the ?napoleonic? era was because the natives were so content with waiting for the french to inevitably entrench on the coast and write off the interior