Читать книгу The History of Mining - Michael Coulson - Страница 60

The development of the South African mining industry in the 19th century led to the rise of a number of historic figures often referred to as The Randlords. Cecil Rhodes was perhaps the most well known of them but the group also contained huge figures like Barney Barnato, Joseph Robinson, Alfred Beit, Charles Rudd and the Joel brothers (nephews of Barnato). Their interest in diamonds predated their involvement in the goldfields of the Witwatersrand, but it was gold that eventually pitted Rhodes, the most political of the Randlords, against the Boer government in the Transvaal. Having said that, there seems little doubt that Rhodes’s first love was diamonds and it was diamonds that saw him at his sharpest as he eventually battled Barnato for control of the Kimberley fields.