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.�