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 world’s 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.”
Chapter 4: THE DIGGERS’ REVOLT
Chapter 6: THE IMPERIAL FACTOR
Chapter 8: THE WASHING OF SPEARS
Chapter 10: THE DIAMOND BUBBLE
Chapter 11: THE STRIPPING CLAUSE
Chapter 12: DREAMS AND FANTASIES
Chapter 13: THE ROAD TO THE NORTH
Chapter 14: THE GERMAN SPECTRE
Chapter 15: THE MOST POWERFUL COMPANY IN THE WORLD
Chapter 19: A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE
Chapter 20: THE PLACE OF SLAUGHTER
Chapter 21: THE BALANCE OF AFRICA
Chapter 23: KRUGER’S PROTECTORATE
Chapter 27: THE LOOT COMMITTEE
Chapter 28: A TALE OF TWO TOWNS
Chapter 30: THE RHODES CONSPIRACY
Chapter 33: BY RIGHT OF CONQUEST
Chapter 34: THE RICHEST SPOT ON EARTH
Chapter 37: THE DRUMBEAT FOR WAR
Chapter 39: THE FORTUNES OF WAR
Chapter 40: MARCHING TO PRETORIA
Chapter 44: THE SUNNYSIDE STRATEGY
Chapter 46: THE BLACK ORDINANCE
Chapter 47: THE SPHINX PROBLEM
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