ABSTRACT
The discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa were without parallel for their impact on future developments in that country. The gold mines provided an early opportunity for Americans to play a role in South African development. Also, South African gold elevated the country's international importance, eventually integrating the class interests of influential Americans, British and South Africans. The key role of the mines in the early development of the South African economy bequeathed considerable political power on the mine owners. From the early 1900s until the 1924 "Pact" government, the mine owners exercised greater influence on government policy than any other group in South African society. The coercive conditions imposed on African mine workers were not necessarily devised in foreign boardrooms, but their direct effect was to enrich bourgeois interests in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, and South Africa.
