Ian Knight was born in 1956. He was a freelance writer on military history for ten years before studying Afro-Caribbean History at the University of Kent. He has written widely on Zulu history and travelled extensively in Zululand. Ian was the editor of the Victorian Military Society journal for many years, and has written several books for Osprey.

Gerry Embleton has been a leading historical illustrator since the early 1970s specialising in the 18th and 19th centuries. An illustrator, and author, of a number of Osprey titles he has lived in Switzerland since the early 1980s.

Over the space of two centuries, the original Dutch settlers of South Africa, augmented by a trickle of refugees from a succession of religious wars in France and Germany, grew into a hardy breed. In time, these people came to think of themselves as white Africans or 'Afrikaners' though they were generally known to one another, and outsiders, as 'Boers', meaning farmers. This book details the fascinating history of the Boers from the 'Great Trek' of 1836-40, through theirr many wars with such peoples as the Zulus and the Pedi, to their final defeat of the Venda in 1898.