The War of the Axe, 1847: Correspondence between the governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Henry Pottinger, and the commander of the British forces at the Cape, Sir George Berkeley, and others

Limited to 850 copies, published by Brenthurst Press, 1981, hardcover, large format,  illustrated, index, 287 pages, wear & repair to dust jacket otherwise condition: very good.

In 1846 a man was caught stealing an axe in Fort Beaufort, a small eastern-frontier town of Britains Cape Colony. The group escorting the thief was attacked by a party of Xhosa who killed a guard and released the prisoner. This incident sparked off hostilities which became known as the War of the Axe, or the Seventh Frontier War.

The Xhosa Wars (also known as the Cape Frontier Wars  were a series of nine wars (from 1779 to 1879) between the Xhosa Kingdom and the British Empire as well as Trekboers from the Dutch colonial empire in what is now the Eastern Cape in South Africa. These events were the longest-running military resistance against European colonialism in Africa. The reality of the conflicts between the Europeans and Xhosa involves a balance of tension. At times, tensions existed between the various Europeans in the Cape region, tensions between Empire administration and colonial governments, and tensions within the Xhosa Kingdom, e.g. chiefs rivaling each other, which usually led to Europeans taking advantage of the situation to meddle in Xhosa politics..The conflicts between the Xhosa and British were covered extensively in the metropolitan British press, generating increased demand among the British public for information about their country's far-off colonial conflicts.

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