The Ndebele state emerged in the 1820s, crossed to the north first of the Vaal, later of the Limpopo, where in the Matopos region of modern Rhodesia it flourished until it was finally destroyed by the British in 1896. The political structure of the kingdom closely reflected the interlinkage of a number of fundamental economic forms of co-operation, among which grain cultivation and the raising and subsequent activities of amabutho (currently translated as 'regiments') stand out. The 'local' emphasis of the former, as opposed to the 'universal' nature of the latter, as well as the particular process of Ndebele*A abu h evolution - which produced the major 'chieftaincies' or iligaba - in turn produced strong tensions between the central state authority, as symbolized by the Khumalo kings, and the outlying 'provinces'. In the Ndebele kingdom the centre held the parts together, nonetheless, and the Ndebele became extremely efficient raptors, either assimilating or holding in a subservient tributary position neighbouring African peoples, or repeatedly attacking them until their potential economically to disrupt the state was neutralized. The eventual collapse of Lobengula's state occurred not only because these features of African society and struggle were alien to, and misrepresented in terms of 'Christian' or 'Victorian' capitalist morality by Europeans, but because these same Europeans, spear-headed by the missionaries, Rhodes and the British South Africa Company, were determined to seize control of the economic potential of the kingdom - its alleged gold, and genuine land, labour and cattle - and, in the guise of subjecting the Ndebele to European 'civilizing' processes, to subvert the economic, and hence the political, structure of the state, and bend it to the needs of European capitalism.