Diamonds, Gold, and War
Click to look inside
Summary
The feel-good place to buy books
Diamonds, Gold, and War by Martin Meredith
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 first upon the worlds richest deposits of diamonds, and then upon its richest deposits of gold. What followed was a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land, culminating in the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and in the devastation of the Boer republics. Martin Merediths magisterial account of those years portrays the great wealth and raw power, the deceit, corruption, and racism that lay behind Britains empire-building in southern Africa. Based on significant new research and filled with atmospheric detail, it focuses on the fascinating rivalry between diamond titan Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger, the Boer leader whose only education was the Bible, who believed the earth was flat, yet who defied Britains prime ministers and generals for nearly a quarter of a century. Diamonds, Gold and War makes palpable the cost of western greed to Africas native peoples, and explains the rise of the virulent Afrikaner nationalism that eventually took hold in South Africa, with repercussions lasting nearly a century.
Martin Meredith has spent much of his life writing about Africa: first as a foreign correspondent for the London Observer and Sunday Times, then as a research fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and now as an independent author and commentator. He is the author of In the Name of Apartheid: South Africa's New Era, The Past is Another Country, The First Dance of Freedom, Nelson Mandela, Coming to Terms: South Africa's Search for Truth, and Africa's Elephant.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781586484736 |
| ISBN 10 | 1586484737 |
| Title | Diamonds, Gold, and War |
| Author | Martin Meredith |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Publisher | PublicAffairs,U.S. |
| Year published | 2007-10-01 |
| Number of pages | 608 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |