Product Description

For more than a century following its discovery, South Africa held little interest for the imperial powers of Europe. When gold was discovered there toward the end of the nineteenth century, the territory suddenly became one of the most hotly contested pieces of real estate in the world. Fuelling the Empire tells the story of the South African gold rush, the vast political and economic forces it set in motion, and the devastating military conflict to which it gave rise–the Boer War, the first large–scale human tragedy of the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1985786 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 292 pages

From the Inside Flap
When payable gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886, it at first appeared to be an event of good fortune, not just for the many individuals who worked in the gold fields, but also for an area that had few resources and an ailing economy. Almost immediately, resourceful diggers from around the world started arriving in Africa, many of them veterans from Australian and American gold rushes. It was a bonanza for the struggling Boer State, but not many individuals made any real profit from these vast gold fields. It proved to be a playground for big capital with the mining magnates, dubbed ′Randlords′ by a critical London press, manipulating the international financial markets. Perversely this apparent good fortune was to be one of the critical factors in the descent to a war that was to devastate the country and lead to massive loss of life, much through disease racing through ill run concentration camps.

In Fuelling the Empire John J. Stephens explains how this tragedy came to happen and how it shaped the future of South Africa for many years to come.

From the Back Cover
What makes a country go to war? At what stage in that sequence of events, of action and reaction, bluff and brinkmanship does war become unavoidable? The South African War was the first large–scale human tragedy of the twentieth century – the prelude to a century that was to be characterised by such large–scale and avoidable tragedy. The cost in human, environmental and financial terms was colossal. Approximately 60,000 men women and children were killed from countries that not only included Britain and South Africa, but also France, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Moreover, the peace terms that allowed for the continuation of discriminatory racial policies set the stage for a century of racial inequality and strife in South Africa.

In this incisive work, South African author, John Stephens, considers the slide to a war that nobody wanted. This is a story of the shaping of South Africa. It is also a universal story: one of pride, greed and fear – of humans behaving in a very human way.

About the Author
John J. Stephens studied political science and law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In 1970, as a member of the United Party, the then official parliamentary opposition, he was elected to the South African parliament to represent his home constituency of Florida. At age 24, he was the youngest MP in South African history up to that time. Politics and history have remained his passion throughout his life. He was Transvaal leader of the New Republic party through the 1980s in which capacity he worked on the development of constitutional reform in collaboration with the Inkatha Freedom Party.
Through his family history, John is intimately connected with the events described in the book. In 1870, at age 16, his patrilineal great–grandfather immigrated to South Africa from Manchester to seek his fortune in Kimberley, but found a Boer wife instead. John′s grandfathers, both bitter–enders, fought the British as members of the Boer commandos. His patrilineal grandmother and her children were internees of a British concentration camp, all of them fortunately surviving with only the scars of bitter me mories. His father was born after the war.
John now works in the fields of finance and managerial training and consultancy. He is a non–practicing advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa.