Fifty years ago, as Europe's colonial powers withdrew, Africa moved with enormous hope and fervor toward democracy and economic independence. Today, most African countries are effectively bankrupt, prone to civil strife, subject to dictatorial rule, weighed down by debt, and heavily dependent on Western assistance for survival. What went wrong? Focusing on the key personalities, events and themes of the independence era, Martin Meredith's magisterial history seeks to explore and explain the myriad problems that Africa has faced in the past half-century, and faces still. Acclaimed by reviewers and readers from across the political spectrum, The Fate of Africa is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how it came to this - and what, if anything, is to be done.

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 region. It culminated in the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and left the Boer republics devastated. In this gripping history of the turbulent years leading up to the founding of the modern state of South Africa in 1910, Martin Meredith portrays the great wealth and raw power, the deceit, corruption, and racism that lay behind Britain's empire-building in southern Africa. Diamonds, Gold, and War is a tale of high adventure, high fi nance, and high politics that also shows the massive impact of white expansion on indigenous African societies. And it explains the rise of the virulent Afrikaner nationalism that eventually took hold, with repercussions lasting nearly a century.

南部非洲一度被认为是由英国殖民地、布尔共和国和非洲酋长领地组成的一锅一文不值的大杂烩，一个对外部世界来说无足轻重的麻烦地区。然而，勘探者偶然发现了世界上最丰富的钻石和黄金矿藏，这引发了英国人和布尔人之间争夺土地控制权的激烈斗争。其结果是英国进行了近一个世纪以来的最昂贵、最血腥、最屈辱的战争，以及布尔共和国的毁灭。《纽约客》把这些年的故事称为“一段精于算计的历史”。梅雷迪斯技巧娴熟地描绘了对钻石（以及黄金）的迫切需求如何为种族隔离奠定了基础。