Volume 33, Number 12 · July 17, 1986
Diamonds Are Forever
By Leonard Thompson
The Randlords
by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Atheneum, 314 pp., $17.95
South Africa defies comparison with other countries. It is unique not only in the persistence of its rigid racial divisions, but also in possessing the world's greatest accumulations of gold and gem-quality diamonds. Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book describes the activities of the men who clawed their way to the top in the scramble for control of these mining industries toward the end of the nineteenth century—men who were the British imperial equivalents of their American contemporaries, the 'robber barons.'
Review, 4162 words
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