Ernest Oppenheimer And The Economic Development Of Southern Africa

Download or read book Ernest Oppenheimer and the Economic Development of Southern Africa written by Theodor Emanuel Gregory and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of this factually detailed book was originally commissioned by Anglo American Corporation of South Africa to write a history of that institution, but it was decided after the death of Ernest Oppenheimer to link the company history directly to his name. As a conventional company history, the book is strong on details but devoid of any serious criticism of the company and its leaders. The focus is on the mining and marketing of diamonds, and there are, therefore, several references to the development of mining in Namibia. The author shows, for example, that the acquisition of monopoly control over the Namibian diamond fields through an Anglo subsidiary, Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM), played an important role in the formation of the newsyndicate in 1925. There is also some information of the strategy of De Beers during the depression in the 1930s, during which CDM was closed down altogether for several years. For another study of the Oppenheimer empire, with fewer details, see Edward Jessup: Ernest Oppenheimer: a study in power. (London: Rex Collings, 1979, 357 p.). From a quite different perspective, Duncan Innes has recently published a well documented and critical analysis of Anglo American Corporation (Anglo American and the rise of modern South Africa, Johannesburg/London 1984). (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).