For Britain the nineteenth century began, in military terms, with the global upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars and ended with a 'modern' conflict in which machine-guns and a scorched-earth policy were deployed against the Boers. In between there was a supposed peace, marred only by glorious, if tragic, enterprises in the Crimea, Africa and Afghanistan, against the Zulus, the Boers, the Mahdi and In...