I know about the Boer War from the Shirley Temple version of A Little Princess! But I'm never sure whether Boer is an appropriate term, as some places I've read that it's the preferred term of people who identify as Boers and other places I've read that it's a racial epithet.

To be completely fair, I read quite a lot of Gandhi's writing this weekend so the South African problems at the time of his writing were fresh in my mind. If you asked me about Australian history I would know a lot less!

I think it happens in most places, that they try not to focus on the ugly parts of your own history. I know slavery is taught very differently in the American South where it was an everyday reality than it is in the American North.