Edmund Yorke is currently Senior Lecturer in the War Studies Department at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, UK. He has authored works on British Imperial and Commonwealth political and military affairs and his recent books include The New South Africa (1998), Playing the Great Game (2012), Battle Story's Rorkes Drift and Isandlwana (2011 and 2012), and Mafeking (2014).

• Foreword by Hew Strachan Introduction 1. Pre-war Northern Rhodesia: The Structural Weaknesses of Colonial Control 2. Labour Recruitment and Mobilisation: The Roots of Crisis 3. Advent of a 'White Man's War': Early Implications for the Survival of White Supremacy 4. Colonial Dependence and African Opportunity: The Indigenous Response to War Exigencies 5. Crumbling Colonial Foundations: Chiefs and Headmen at War 6. The Strain of Total War: A Colonial State In Retreat 7. The Nadir of Colonial Power in Northern Rhodesia 8. Re-conquest and Reconstruction

"The author has filled a gap in the early years of Northern Rhodesia dominated by WWI. No-one before has brought together so much relevant material in such a concentrated form. ... The author is to be warmly congratulated for his contribution to such an important part of Northern Rhodesia's social, imperial and military history and on the painstaking research entailed." (Roland A. Hill, The Overseas Pensioner, Issue 111, April, 2016)