Queering Colonial Natal

"Brilliant, generous, and generative, Queering Colonial Natal seamlessly demonstrates why scholars of nineteenth-century South African history should read contemporary North American queer and indigenous history and vice versa. T.J. Tallie shows how and why South Africa should be in discussions of settler colonialism as well as how and why a global queer studies needs to pay attention to the history of a place like Natal."—Neville Hoad, author of African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization

"Sophisticated and brilliant. Queering Colonial Natal offers much needed interventions to ongoing conversations in settler colonial studies, queer studies, and Indigenous studies by expanding the geographies, political contexts, and theoretical stakes for historical analyses of white settlement and Indigenous resistances. In foregrounding case studies that expose the normative constraints white settlers imposed on Zulu as the exclusionary standards for civilized belonging, T.J. Tallie advances how critical Indigenous theory understands the colonial cacophonies of race, gender, and sexuality."—Jodi A. Byrd, author of The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism

"All in all, this is a wonderful and important book. It helps the audience understand and redefine contemporary heterosexual normativity beyond colonial Africa and links settler queering of indigenous Africans in Natal with Africa’s anti-gay rhetoric today (Tallie 2019, 188-189). Tallie’s depiction of the heteronormativity and global nature of settler colonization is truly valuable to anthropology, European Studies, and many other humanities and social science disciplines. Anyone who is interested in race in post-colonial societies or want to better understand today’s issue with race should read this book."—EuropeNow

"Queering Colonial Natal masterfully details the kinds of perpetual settler labor and vigilance required to respond to the indigenous African majority and the Indian migrant populations who were continually manipulating and shaping the settler order from the margins."—GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies

"Tallie’s book contributes to an in-depth understanding of the machinations of settler control as well as the deep fears and desires of the settler state."—Gender & History

"Throughout the book, Tallie’s style is clear and elegant. When each chapter ended, I found myself wanting more of his commentary and analysis of the intricate race and gender dynamics that permeated nearly every part of life in Natal."—Ethnic Studies Review

"This book is genuinely invaluable to diverse fields such as history, African queer studies, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences."—Journal of African History

How were indigenous social practices deemed queer and aberrant by colonial forces?

In Queering Colonial Natal, T.J. Tallie travels to colonial Natalestablished by the British in 1843, today South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal provinceto show how settler regimes “queered” indigenous practices. Defining them as threats to the normative order they sought to impose, they did so by delimiting Zulu polygamy; restricting alcohol access, clothing, and even friendship; and assigning only Europeans to government schools. 

Using queer and critical indigenous theory, this book critically assesses Natal (where settlers were to remain a minority) in the context of the global settler colonial project in the nineteenth century to yield a new and engaging synthesis. Tallie explores the settler colonial history of Natal’s white settlers and how they sought to establish laws and rules for both whites and Africans based on European mores of sexuality and gender. At the same time, colonial archives reveal that many African and Indian people challenged such civilizational claims. 

Ultimately Tallie argues that the violent collisions between Africans, Indians, and Europeans in Natal shaped the conceptions of race and gender that bolstered each group’s claim to authority. 

T.J. Tallie is assistant professor of history at the University of San Diego.