<DIV>Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced upon the world's richest deposits of diamonds and gold, setting off a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land. The result was the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and the devastation of the Boer republics. <I>The New Yorker</I> calls this magisterial account of those years ?[an] astute history.? Meredith expertly shows how the exigencies of the diamond (and then gold) rush laid the foundation for apartheid.”</DIV>