description: In the late 1860s South Africa was the forgotten end of the earth, remote, empty, and poor. Within thirty years it was irrevocably changed by the discovery of fabulous riches in diamonds and in gold. To these fields went every buccaneer, swindler, and adventurer at the turn of the century, where man of them made staggeringly huge fortunes, amassing baronetcies and Park Lane mansions along the way. The Randlords, as they were called, were men of ferocious feuds and ambitions--men like Cecil Rhodes, who began life as a vicar's son and ended it with sinister ideals of Teutonic world domination; like Alfred Beit, gauche and celibate, as cripplingly shy as he was infinitely cunning and Barney Barnato, prizefighter, comic actor, unconvicted illicit diamond dealer, so expert in stock manipulation that by the of his suicide at the age of forty-four he had come to swindling himself.
language: English
title: The Randlords: the men who made South Africa
titlecomplete: The Randlords: the men who made South Africa
genres: Nonfiction, History, South Africa, Africa
ratings_count: 21
publisher: Orion