We pull together points from across the preceding three chapters to consider pressing matters in imperial historiography. We evaluate the complexities that lay beneath Frank Oates’ racism, as well as the roles played by contingencies and African agency, in explaining the traveller’s sense of the Ndebele and King Lobengula. We also consider the broader implications of this case study for what it tells us about late Victorian British imperialism. We finish by looking to what happened next, with the destruction of an independent Ndebele nation and the coming of empire.