For nearly a century, from the battle of Waterloo to the outbreak of the First World War, the British army was primarily focused on wars against native tribes around the empire. (The one key exception was fighting Russia in the Crimea from 1854 to 1856.)
These engagements on the fringes of empire provided abundant material for the novels of H Rider Haggard and G A Henty: tales of derring-do that helped build and sustain support for the great imperial adventure of the late 19th century.
These novels created myths around heroic struggles between white colonialists and local natives that sustained more than one generation in its imperial dream.
