Diamonds, Gold, and War

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From the author of The Fate of Africa: A vivid, gripping history of the turbulent years leading up to the founding of the modern state of South Africa in 1910



Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced upon the worlds richest deposits of diamonds and gold, setting off a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land. The result was the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and the devastation of the Boer republics. The New Yorker calls this magisterial account of those years [an] astute history...Meredith expertly shows how the exigencies of the diamond (and then gold) rush laid the foundation for apartheid.