USA in Zulu war?

I know that this might seem a wee bit a flight of fantasy....I dunno draw your own conclusions. US missionaries get killed and then the Marines arrive?
 
I don't think Africa was exactly crawling with American missionaries back then and in the case that one were killed they would not be a war about it. Missionaries being killed wasn't that uncommon and no one ever fought a war over it. It was seen as a job risk.
 

mowque

Banned
I don't think Africa was exactly crawling with American missionaries back then and in the case that one were killed they would not be a war about it. Missionaries being killed wasn't that uncommon and no one ever fought a war over it. It was seen as a job risk.

There may have been a few, but most were British, if I recall.

Yeah, no war. This isn't enough to start a war with the UK, the Big Bad of the period.
 
The US only intervened overseas when American economic interests were threatened. The go-to example for this sort of foreign intervention would be the various Latin American incidents and the Boxer Rebellion, all of which occurred in areas where there was a substantial investment of American capital. South Africa just doesn't have that level of American economic involvement, so it wouldn't be worth taxpayer dollars to dispatch an expeditionary force that far overseas.
 
How would the tiny American military arrive in the first place?

Of all the service branches of the US armed forces in the 19th century, the Navy was the most professional and prepared of them all, so it wouldn't be very difficult to ferry troops overseas. You see this in the Spanish-American War, where the Navy's performance was speedy and nearly flawless while it took months for the Army to get their act in order.
 
The US would require an army which did not exist and British permission to land that army on British soil for the purpose of fighting the British inside their own colony. No chance of this happening.
 
It also took us quite some time to scrape up an army which would have done much worse had the Spanish actually attempted to offer resistance during the landings in Cuba or Puerto Rico.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
A) The murder of a few missionaries wouldn't be enough to stimulate an American response. B) The British wouldn't have let them come, anyway.
 
Why would the USA come over and fight the British (who probably aren't going to be deliberately attacking Missionaries.) On the other hand, if the Zulus kill an American missionary (and you'd be surprised how far Americans got around back then, with a brace of American secret agents running around in the Sikh Wars), they get a harshly worded letter, some public anger may break out, possibly some token troops are sent in with British permission, and nothing really changes.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
At that point our military was no longer tiny we were in the very least a secondary power, we did beat Spain in a war which was a pretty big deal at the time.

In January 1879 the USN did not have a single modern ship. They were still building wooden screw sloops with some smoothbore ordnance well into the 1880's. The pride of the USN is the new wooden screw frigate Trenton, a vessel that capsized at Samoa a few years later*.

The US Army had an establishment of 27,442 officers and men, and probably had no more than 20,000. The field artillery establishment was for 20 old ACW era muzzle loading 10 pdr rifles. There was no "National Militia" of any worth , the 1898 crises showed that of 100,000 men on the militia rolls 60,000 had never attended a single training session.

* The Ballad of the Calliope by Patterson:

By the far Samoan shore,
Where the league-long rollers pour
All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay,
Riding lightly at their ease,
In the calm of tropic seas,
The three great nations’ warships at their anchors proudly lay.

Riding lightly, head to wind,
With the coral reefs behind,
Three Germans and three Yankee ships were mirrored in the blue;
And on one ship unfurled
Was the flag that rules the world –
For on the old `Calliope’ the flag of England flew.

When the gentle off-shore breeze,
That had scarcely stirred the trees,
Dropped down to utter stillness, and the glass began to fall,
Away across the main
Lowered the coming hurricane,
And far away to seaward hung the cloud wrack like a pall.

If the word had passed around,
`Let us move to safer ground;
Let us steam away to seaward’ — then this tale were not to tell!
But each Captain seemed to say
`If the others stay, I stay!’
And they lingered at their moorings till the shades of evening fell.

Then the cloud wrack neared them fast,
And there came a sudden blast,
And the hurricane came leaping down a thousand miles of main!
Like a lion on its prey,
Leapt the storm fiend on the bay,
And the vessels shook and shivered as their cables felt the strain.

As the surging seas came by,
That were running mountains high,
The vessels started dragging, drifting slowly to the lee;
And the darkness of the night
Hid the coral reefs from sight,
And the Captains dared not risk the chance to grope their way to sea.

In the dark they dared not shift!
They were forced to wait and drift;
All hands stood by uncertain would the anchors hold or no.
But the men on deck could see
If a chance of hope might be –
There was little chance of safety for the men who were below.

Through that long, long night of dread,
While the storm raged overhead,
They were waiting by their engines, with the furnace fires aroar.
So they waited, staunch and true,
Though they knew, and well they knew,
They must drown like rats imprisoned if the vessel touched the shore.

When the grey dawn broke at last,
And the long, long night was past,
While the hurricane redoubled, lest its prey should steal away,
On the rocks, all smashed and strewn,
Were the German vessels thrown,
While the Yankees, swamped and helpless, drifted shorewards down the bay.

Then at last spoke Captain Kane,
`All our anchors are in vain,
And the Germans and the Yankees they have drifted to the lee!
Cut the cables at the bow!
We must trust the engines now!
Give her steam, and let her have it, lads, we’ll fight her out to sea!’

And the answer came with cheers
From the stalwart engineers,
From the grim and grimy firemen at the furnaces below;
And above the sullen roar
Of the breakers on the shore
Came the throbbing of the engines as they laboured to and fro.

If the strain should find a flaw,
Should a bolt or rivet draw,
Then — God help them! for the vessel were a plaything in the tide!
With a face of honest cheer,
Quoth an English engineer,
`I will answer for the engines that were built on old Thames side!

`For the stays and stanchions taut,
For the rivets truly wrought,
For the valves that fit their faces as a glove should fit the hand.
Give her every ounce of power,
If we make a knot an hour
Then it’s way enough to steer her and we’ll drive her from the land.’

Like a foam flake tossed and thrown,
She could barely hold her own,
While the other ships all helplessly were drifting to the lee.
Through the smother and the rout
The `Calliope’ steamed out –
And they cheered her from the Trenton that was foundering in the sea.

Aye! drifting shoreward there,
All helpless as they were,
Their vessel hurled upon the reefs as weed ashore is hurled.
Without a thought of fear
The Yankees raised a cheer –
A cheer that English-speaking folk should echo round the world.
 
There were Americans floating about the South African colonies for all sorts of reasons and I'm sure IOTL they got up to all sorts of things. Dammed if I know why the government of the US would give a damm though
 
I know that this might seem a wee bit a flight of fantasy....I dunno draw your own conclusions. US missionaries get killed and then the Marines arrive?

The problem is that during the Zulu War, the Zulus were clearly the victims of an colonial agression organized by the civil and military british autority from the Cape colony without the knowledge and autorization of the British government.

So if the Zulus killed a american missionary, the Zulus themselves will execute the murderers in a cruel fashion and offered to compensate the family victim by offering severals hundred cows.

Maybe this will be beginning of a kind of friendship between the Zulu King and the american missionaries, so when the British will use some minors borders accidents, these american missionaries could be trustworthy witnesses of the british agression.
 
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