At the end of the 19th century, the attention of the whole world was focused on the confrontation between the tiny Boer states and the huge British Empire. At that time, a war was going on in southern Africa, which became the prototype of future world conflicts. Machine guns, repeating rifles, armored trains and rapid-fire guns - almost all the attributes of modern warfare were tested on the fields of the Transvaal and the Orange Republic. One of the first books about the Anglo-Boer War was the memoirs of the partisan general Christian Devet, which were almost immediately translated into Russian and were not republished in Russia for more than a hundred years. Only now does the modern reader have the opportunity to get acquainted with the view of the Boer War from the losing side.