I picked up this incredible book, Diamonds, Gold and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, by Martin Meredith for $2.00 at a Big Lots in Kansas City. Amazing to find it there. Long story short - an incredibly detailed, yet incredibly readable, history of South Africa from the time of the arrival of Cecil Rhodes through the establishment of the Union of South Africa following the Second Boer War.
Meredith could have easily subtitled the book "How Could These Guys Sleep at Night?". The main character throughout this history is Cecil Rhodes, and what's a recurring theme throughout, and stunning to the modern reader, is not just how cravenly dishonest, feckless, and brazen he and other British politicians and businessmen were in the conduct of their business and politics. Perhaps the only character less honorable than Rhodes was Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner and Governor of the Cape Colony, who almost singlehandedly started the Second Boer War, which killed tens of thousands (over 22,000 British troops) and resulted in a scorched earth policy by the British toward the Boers that drove thousands of women and children to suffer and die in miserable concentration camps, and paved the way for the unique cruelty of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
I could go on and on. Great book. Excellent history. Great read. Jolly good stuff.
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