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Social sciences.
Beyond Gold and Diamonds demonstrates the importance of southern Africa to British literature from the 1880s to the 1920s, from the rise of the systematic exploitation of the region's mineral wealth to the aftermath of World War I. It focuses on fiction by the colonial-born Olive Schreiner, southern Africa's first literary celebrity, as well as by H. Rider Haggard, Gertrude Page, and John Buchan, its most influential authorial informants, British authors who spent significant time in the region and wrote about it as insiders. Tracing the ways in which generic innovation enabled these writers to negotiate cultural and political concerns through a uniquely British South African lens, Melissa Free argues that British South African literature constitutes a distinct field, one that overlaps with but also exists apart from both a national South African literary tradition and a tradition of South African literature in English. The various genres that British South African novelists introduced—the New Woman novel, the female colonial romance, the Rhodesian settler romance, and the modern spy thriller—anticipated metropolitan literary developments while consolidating Britain's sense of its own dominion in a time of increasing opposition.
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.”
Before the advent of the great mineral revolution in the latter half of the 19th century, South Africa was a sleepy colonial backwater whose unpromising landscape was seemingly devoid of any economic potential. Yet lying just beneath the dusty surface of the land lay the richest treasure trove of gold, diamonds, platinum, coal and a host of other metals and minerals that has ever been discovered in one country. It was the discovery and exploitation of first diamonds in 1870 and then gold in 1886 that proved the catalyst to the greatest mineral revolution the world has ever known, which transformed South Africa into the supreme industrialised power on the African continent. Here for the first time is the complete history of South Africa's phenomenal mineral revolution spanning a period of more than 150 years, from its earliest commercial beginnings to the present day, incorporating seven of the major commodities that have been exploited. Digging Deep describes the establishment and unparalleled growth of mining, tracing the history of the industry from its humble beginnings where copper was first mined on a commercial basis in Namaqualand in the Cape Colony in the early 1850s, to the discovery and exploitation of the country's other major mineral commodities. This is also the story of how mining gave rise to modern South Africa and how it compelled the country to develop and progress the way in which it did. It also incorporates the stories of the visionary men - Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, Sammy Marks and Hans Merensky - who pioneered and shaped the development of the industry on which modern South Africa was built.
A full-color, illustrated, super condensed history of South Africa from prehistoric times to the present
“Unforgettable. . . . An outstanding adventure in its lyrical, utterly compelling, and heartbreaking investigations of the world of diamond smuggling.” —Aimee Nezhukumatathil For nearly eighty years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed off to the public. With many of its pits now deemed “overmined” and abandoned, American journalist Matthew Gavin Frank sets out across the infamous Diamond Coast to investigate an illicit trade that supplies a global market. Immediately, he became intrigued by the ingenious methods used in facilitating smuggling particularly, the illegal act of sneaking carrier pigeons onto mine property, affixing diamonds to their feet, and sending them into the air. Entering Die Sperrgebiet (“The Forbidden Zone”) is like entering an eerie ghost town, but Frank is surprised by the number of people willing—even eager—to talk with him. Soon he meets Msizi, a young diamond digger, and his pigeon, Bartholomew, who helps him steal diamonds. It’s a deadly game: pigeons are shot on sight by mine security, and Msizi knows of smugglers who have disappeared because of their crimes. For this, Msizi blames “Mr. Lester,” an evil tall-tale figure of mythic proportions. From the mining towns of Alexander Bay and Port Nolloth, through the “halfway” desert, to Kleinzee’s shores littered with shipwrecks, Frank investigates a long overlooked story. Weaving interviews with local diamond miners who raise pigeons in secret with harrowing anecdotes from former heads of security, environmental managers, and vigilante pigeon hunters, Frank reveals how these feathered bandits became outlaws in every mining town. Interwoven throughout this obsessive quest are epic legends in which pigeons and diamonds intersect, such as that of Krishna’s famed diamond Koh-i-Noor, the Mountain of Light, and that of the Cherokee serpent Uktena. In these strange connections, where truth forever tangles with the lore of centuries past, Frank is able to contextualize the personal grief that sent him, with his wife Louisa in the passenger seat, on this enlightening journey across parched lands. Blending elements of reportage, memoir, and incantation, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers is a rare and remarkable portrait of exploitation and greed in one of the most dangerous areas of coastal South Africa. With his sovereign prose and insatiable curiosity, Matthew Gavin Frank “reminds us that the world is a place of wonder if only we look” (Toby Muse).
Russell H. Conwell Founder Of Temple University Philadelphia.