Diamonds, Gold, and War. The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa

(New York: Public Affairs, 2007) 9781586484736. 8vo; papered boards, lettered in gilt on spine; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; endpaper map; pp. (xviii) + 570, incl. index; plates. Dustwrapper ever so slightly rubbed; trace of spotting to top edge. Very good condition. "Southern Africa had once been 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, 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 gold-bearing reef on a highveld ridge known as the Witwatersrand. Beneath lay the richest deposits of gold ever discovered. What followed was a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the region. It culminated in the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and left the Boer republics devastated. The Anglo-Boer War played as important a part in the making of modern South Africa as did the Civil War in the development of the United States. ... In this gripping history of the turbulent years leading up to the founding of the modern state of South Africa in 1910, Martin Meredith portrays the great wealth and raw power, the deceit, corruption, and racism that lay behind Britain's empire-building in southern Africa. Diamonds, Gold, and War is a tale of high adventure, high finance, and high politics." .