Customer Reviews

The Randlords (A Touchstone book)

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"The Randlords" is a readable book about the adventurers, financiers, and con-artists who built South Africa's mining industry in the 19th century -- and in the process invented modern South Africa. This isn't one of those "business heroes" books that deify and glamorize capitalists. On the contrary, the author shows how the Randlords swindled investors, cartelized the diamond industry, and formed a labor monopsony to exploit black workers. He doesn't gloss over the thuggery that underwrote the British empire, and he shows how the mines' need for cheap black labor cast a huge shadow over South Africa's troubled 20th century history. It's sophisticated, clear-eyed history. That said, the interesting business and political history tends to get buried beneath an avalanche of biographical trivia and anecdotes, as if the author didn't know what to include and what to leave out of the book. There's also almost no discussion of the Boer War or the Union of 1910, which are huge omissions for any book on the history of the period.