Custer and the Sioux, Durnford and the Zulus: Parallels in the American and British Defeats at the Little Bighorn (1876) and Isandlwana (1879)

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In June 1876 General George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry was savagely defeated in the Montana wilderness during an unprovoked attempt to seize Sioux and Cheyenne hunting grounds. Three years later Queen Victoria’s redcoat troops, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Anthony W. Durnford, made an equally high-handed grab for Zulu land in South Africa, mirroring Little Bighorn with their own humiliating destruction at Isandlwana.

Custer and Durnford had much in common, from their modes of dress to the circumstances of their deaths. This book interweaves the stories of the two soldiers and their final battles, revealing how–to an astonishing degree–similar personalities, aims, tactics and weapons and an underestimation of so-called savages led to calamitous defeat.