Review: Hottentot
Tiger Miniatures is a British manufacturer of 28mm Colonial miniatures that includes Rough Riders, American Infantry, 9th and 10th Cavalry, Spanish in slouch hats / sun helmets, Cuban Civil Guard, Cuban Rebels and Moros. Also included are mountain guns with crew, artillery with crew, Gatling gun with crew, and three different mule drives and two mules.
They were traditionally—and are still occasionally in colloquial language—known to white colonists as the Hottentots, a name that is currently generally considered offensive. The word “hottentot” meant “stutterer” or “stammerer” in the colonists’ northern dialect of Dutch, although some Dutch use the verb stotteren to describe the clicking sounds (klik being the normal onomatopoeia, parallel to English) typically used in the Khoisan languages.
Migratory Khoi bands living around what is today Cape Town intermarried with San. However the two groups remained culturally distinct as the Khoikhoi continued to graze livestock and the San subsisted as hunter-gatherers. The Khoi initially came into contact with European explorers and merchants in approximately AD 1500. The ongoing encounters were often violent, although the British made some attempt to develop more amiable relationships. Local population dropped when the Khoi were exposed to smallpox by Europeans. Active warfare between the groups flared when the Dutch East India Company enclosed traditional grazing land for farms. Over the following century the Khoi were steadily driven off their land, which effectively ended traditional Khoikhoi life.
Khoikhoi social organisation was profoundly damaged and, in the end, destroyed by European colonial expansion and land seizure from the late 17th century onwards. As social structures broke down, some Khoikhoi people settled on farms and became bondsmen or farmworkers; others were incorporated into existing clan and family groups of the Xhosa people.
Contents
The review sample sent was a Hottentot soldier cast in metal. It came shipped in a baggie.
The Good
There was no mould slippage and only a very small amount of cleaning was required.
The Bad
None.
The Ugly
None.
Scale: 28mm heroic scale
Cost: £4.50 / set
Rating
