Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa

'Vivid and thrilling... A book I know I will re-read time and again over the years ahead.' Wilbur Smith

Author: Martin Meredith

Publisher: Jonathan Ball / Simon & Schuster, 2007, soft cover 570 pages incl. index, 150 x 235

Condition: VG and unmarked

'The prize was great -- not just the land, but the riches it held. 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 in 1871, everything changed. Prospectors exploring a remote stretch of sun-scorched scrubland chanced upon the world's richest deposits of diamonds. Fifteen years later, an itinerant digger stumbled across the rocky outcrop of a gold-bearing reef on a ridge known as the Witwatersrand. Beneath lay the riches deposits of gold ever discovered...

Suddenly the region was glittering prize...

In this superbly vivid and gripping history of the turbulent years leading up to the founding of the modern state of South Africa in 1910, Martin Meredith protrays the great wealth and raw power, the deceit and corruption that lay behind Britain's empire-building in southern Africa. It is a portrait of history red in tooth and claw, of a period when fortunes were made and lost; and when great men had their reputations forged, or dashed, and sometimes both...

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