Colenso, 1899: The Boer War in Natal (Praeger Illustrated Military History Series)

96 pp. In 1899 Great Britain was at the pinnacle of its imperial power. Yet the British army was destined to be defeated by a citizen militia composed of South African frontier farmers - the Boers. In one week in December 1899 the farmers of the South African Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal inflicted three serious reverses on British troops. This book sets the battles in context and explains the failure of a professional army, skilled in the fighting techniques of the nineteenth century, when faced with an enemy whose strategy and tactics foreshadowed the warfare of the twentieth.