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In 1899, the British went to war with the Boer Republics.  This was when the British Empire was close to its blazing zenith and unquestionably the ranking world power.  Any war against the somewhat backward Boers on a remote border of the empire in southern Africa would surely be quick and decisive.  It did not turn out that way.  As Rudyard Kipling put it, the Boers gave the British “no end of a lesson.”  Thomas Pakenham tells the story in “The Boer War.”