Imperial strategy and the Anglo--Zulu War of 1879.

ON 22 JANUARY 1879, the British army suffered its worst colonial defeat of the nineteenth century when 1,500 men armed with the most modern weapons then available were wiped out at the battle of Isandlwana by a Zulu army--an impi--of 25,000 warriors armed only with spears. That an army of this size had slipped past British reconnaissance on the open veldt of South Africa to mount such a successful attack was remarkable in itself, but a second battle on that same day at a small mission station named Rorke's Drift made these events more remarkable still. Here, 120 men decided to…