![]() ![]() Keate (then lieutenant governor of Natal) found in favour of Waterboer, but the British persuaded him to request protection against his Boer rivals, and the area was annexed as Griqualand West. At a special hearing in October 1871, Robert W. ![]() ![]() The diamond zone was simultaneously claimed by the Orange Free State, the South African Republic, the western Griqua under Nicolaas Waterboer, and southern Tswana chiefs. ![]() Although some white diggers continued to work as overseers or skilled labourers, from the mid-1880s the workforce consisted mainly of Black migrant workers housed in closed compounds by the companies (a method that had previously been used in Brazil). The industry became a monopoly by 1889 when De Beers Consolidated Mines (controlled by Cecil Rhodes) became the sole producer. A new class of mining capitalists oversaw the transition from diamond digging to mining industry as joint-stock companies bought out diggers. As production rapidly centralized and mechanized, however, ownership and labour patterns were divided more starkly along racial lines. Initially, individual diggers, Black and white, worked small claims by hand. By the end of 1871 nearly 50,000 people lived in a sprawling polyglot mining camp that was later named Kimberley. Richer finds in “dry diggings” in 1870 led to a large-scale rush. Diamonds and confederationĪ chance find in 1867 had drawn several thousand fortune seekers to alluvial diamond diggings along the Orange, Vaal, and Harts rivers. These dramatic changes were propelled by two linked forces: the development of a capitalist mining industry and a sequence of imperialist interventions by Britain. British colonies, Boer republics, and African kingdoms all came under British control. As the predominantly agrarian societies of European South Africa began to urbanize and industrialize, the region evolved into a major supplier of precious minerals to the world economy gold especially was urgently needed to back national currencies and ensure the continued flow of expanding international trade. Midway between these dates, in 1886, the world’s largest goldfields were discovered on the Witwatersrand. South Africa experienced a transformation between 1870, when the diamond rush to Kimberley began, and 1902, when the South African War ended.
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