The Fire of Venture Was in His Veins: Major Allan Wilson and the Shangani Patrol 1893

The Shangani or Allan Wilson's Patrol was a minor incident in the British expansion in Africa. Much smaller in scale than the massacre of Isandlwana, the fate of the Patrol was a black mark on the British South Africa's conquest of Matabeleland. The Patrol was part of the Ndebele War of 1893-94 which ended in the overthrow of the kingdom of Lobengula, King of the Ndebele.

The war was a joint enterprise of Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company and the British Government but the Company was the senior partner. Leander Starr Jameson with his military adviser John Willoughby, both of whom were to be protagonists in the notorious Jameson Raid, were heavily involved in the overthrow of Lobengula. Jameson's instructions to the leader of the Patrol, Major Patrick Forbes, placed him in an invidious position and virtually split his command. Allan Wilson and his men were sent to his