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Randlords
The Randlords () were the capitalists who controlled the diamond and gold mining industries in South Africa from the 1870s to the First World War. A small number of Europe, European financiers, largely of the same generation, gained control of the diamond mining industry at Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley. They set up an infrastructure of financing and industrial consolidation, which they applied to exploit the discoveries of gold from 1886 in South African Republic, Transvaal at Witwatersrand, the "South African rand, rand". Once based in Transvaal, many set up residence in the Parktown mansions, mansions of Parktown. Many of the Randlords received baronetcies in recognition of their contributions. Notable Randlords *George Albu, Sir George Albu, 1st Bt (1857–1935) *Leopold Albu (1861–1938) *Abe Bailey, Sir Abe Bailey, 1st Bt (1864–1940) *Barney Barnato (1852–1897) *Alfred Beit (1853–1906) *Otto Beit, Sir Otto Beit, 1st Bt (1865–1930) *Hermann Ludwig Eckstein (18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sigismund Neumann
Sir Sigismund Neumann (Anglicized name Sigmund) (1857 1916) was a mining magnate (Randlord) and financier on the Witwatersrand. Early life and family Neumann was born in Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria, on 25 May 1857 to Jewish parents, Gustav and Babette Neumann. In his late teens, he emigrated to Cape Colony to seek his fortune in the Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley diamond mines. His brother Ludwig moved to London, where he worked with the financiers Leopold Hirsch & Co., who went into the market for mining shares, and made his way in society. First years on the Rand Neumann began as a diamond buyer for the firm V.A. & E.M. Littkie, but then moved to the Barberton, Mpumalanga, Barberton gold fields and founded his own company S. Neumann & Co. when gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand. His staff in Johannesburg included Sydney Goldman, Charles Sydney Goldman, who had moved from agriculture into the mining industry. He became a partner in 1895. Carl Hanau from Freiburg im Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Ludwig Eckstein
Hermann Ludwig Eckstein (3 August 1847 – 16 January 1893) was a German-born British people, British mining magnate and banker. He was instrumental in the development of gold mining in South Africa, the Minerals Council South Africa, South African Chamber of Mines, and the First National Bank (South Africa), National Bank of the South African Republic. Life history Born in Hohenheim near Stuttgart, Germany to a Lutheran minister, he received an excellent education. He came to the South African diamond- and goldfields in 1882, and soon acquired a reputation as the resourceful manager of the Phoenix Diamond Mining Company at Du Toit's Pan near Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley. He attracted the attention of Julius Wernher and Alfred Beit and in 1884 joined them in the partnership of Jules Porgès & Co (later Wernher, Beit & Co). In 1885, Beit arranged for Hermann Eckstein and Jim B. Taylor, Jim Taylor to report on the firm's interests in the Barberton, Mpumalanga, Barberton an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Beit
Alfred Beit (15 February 1853 – 16 July 1906) was an Anglo-German gold and diamond magnate in South Africa, and a major donor and profiteer of infrastructure development on the African continent. He also donated much money to university education and research in several countries, and was the "silent partner" who structured the capital flight from post-Boer War South Africa to Rhodesia. Beit's assets were structured around the so-called Corner House Group, which through its holdings in various companies controlled 37 per cent of the gold produced at the Witwatersrand's goldfields in Johannesburg in 1913.See chapter 12 in Rönnbäck & Broberg (2019) Capital and Colonialism. The Return on British Investments in Africa 1869-1969 (Palgrave Studies in Economic History) Life and career Born and brought up in , |
Abe Bailey
Sir Abraham Bailey, 1st Baronet (6 November 1864 – 10 August 1940), known as Abe Bailey, was a South African diamond and gold tycoon, politician, financier and cricketer. Early years Bailey's mother, Ann Drummond McEwan, was Scottish by birth while his father, Thomas Bailey, was from Yorkshire, England. Married in 1860 in South Africa, Thomas and Ann Bailey had four children, Mary, Abraham, Susannah and Alice, before Ann Bailey's premature death in 1872, when young Abe was only seven years old. Abe Bailey was sent to England to be educated, first at Keighley and later at Clewer House. After the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899, a corps of imperial volunteers from London was formed in late December 1899. The corps included infantry, mounted infantry and artillery divisions and was authorized with the name City of London Imperial Volunteers. It proceeded to South Africa in January 1900, returned in October the same year, and was disbanded in December 1900. Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Porgès
Jules Porgès (25 May 1839 – 20 September 1921) was a Paris-based financier who played a central role in the rise of the Randlords who controlled the diamond and gold mining industries in South Africa. He was born Yehuda Porges in Vienna and raised in Prague, where his father was a jeweller. He settled in Paris in the early 1860s and established himself as a diamond trader, through his company Jules Porgès & Cie. He recognized early the significance of the diamond finds in South Africa and, in 1873, sent two of his younger staff, Alfred Beit and Julius Wernher, to South Africa as his firm's representatives. He arrived in Kimberley himself in 1876 and continued their work in consolidating claims, financing deals and marketing stones, so that his firm Compagnie Française de Diamant du Cap de Bonne Espérance gained a significant portion of the Kimberley mine. He saw the benefit of Cecil Rhodes's attempt to consolidate the disparate mining holdings, and sold the Compagnie Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Michaelis
Sir Maximillian Michaelis, (11 May 1852 – 26 January 1932) was a South African financier, mining magnate, benefactor and patron of the arts. He received his early schooling in Nuremberg. Mining career Michaelis first arrived in South Africa in 1876 when he landed at Port Elizabeth. Two years later he moved to Kimberley, drawn by the 1871 discovery of diamonds and the prospect of wealth. Here he became a close business associate of Julius Wernher and Alfred Beit, and got to know Hermann Eckstein and Jim B. Taylor – friendships that were to last a lifetime. He was co-opted by Wernher to deal in diamonds for Porges and Wernher, and in the 1880s restructured the Cape Diamond Company. He was a founding partner of Wernher, Beit & Co. Within some years he became manager of the Central Mining and Investment Corporation in Johannesburg. From 1896 he worked at the corporation's offices in London and remained there until 1919, when he returned to South Africa. In England he l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Herbert Farrar
Sir George Herbert Farrar, 1st Baronet, (17 June 1859 – 20 May 1915) was a South African mining magnate, politician and soldier – Colonel and assistant Quartermaster General – Central Force, Union Defence Force, Hon. Colonel South African Light Horse. Early life and career Farrar was born in 1859 in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, the son of Charles Farrar, a Chatteris medical doctor, and Helen Howard, the daughter of John Howard of Cauldwell House Bedford and sister of Sir Frederick Howard of Bedford and James Howard MP of Bedford. George Herbert Farrar was educated at Bedford Modern School after which he joined Howard, Farrar & Co., the engineering business of his uncle, Sir Frederick Howard, travelling to South Africa in 1879 to work at the firm's branches in Port Elizabeth and East London. He was the brother of John Percy Farrar, soldier and mountaineer. Later life In 1887, shortly after the discovery of gold on the Reef, he and his brothers established themselves ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Albu
Sir George Albu, 1st Baronet (26 October 1857 – 27 December 1935) was a mining magnate in the diamond and gold industries of South Africa. Biography Lady Albu at wheel of CGV, London April 1905 Northwards, Johannesburg 26.17720S, 28.03650E George Albu was born in Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia in 1857. The son of Simon Albu (26 February 1830 – 26 February 1911) and Fanny Sternberg (d. 24 October 1912), George and his brother Leopold were German Jews who emigrated to Cape Colony in 1876. On arrival in Cape Town, George became an assistant at the haberdashery counter in Stuttafords. After some time in Cape Town, they moved to the diamond-fields of Kimberley, accumulated financial interests, and sold out to De Beers at a substantial profit, before settling on the Witwatersrand and becoming a naturalized Transvaal citizen in 1887. George Albu purchased the ailing Meyer and Charlton Mine, restructured it, and on 30 December 1895 he and his brother established General Mining a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lionel Phillips
Sir Lionel Phillips, 1st Baronet (6 August 1855 – 2 July 1936) was a British-born South African financier, mining magnate and politician. Early life Phillips was born in London on 6 August 1855 to Phillip Phillips, a trader, and his wife Jane Lazerus.Maryna Fraser, 'Phillips, Sir Lionel, first baronet (1855–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200accessed 29 July 2013/ref> He was one of three sons and the family was lower middle-class, thus his early formal education was very limited. He commenced working for his father as a bookkeeper at the age of 14 but soon left the business and ventured out on his own, joining a firm of London diamond-sorters. Hearing of the discovery of large diamond deposits in Kimberley, he decided to seek his fortune and emigrate to the Cape Colony. He arrived at the Kimberley diamond fields in 1875, having walked most of the way there from Cape Town, and worked for Joseph Benjamin Robi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Marks
Samuel Marks (July 11, 1844 – February 18, 1920) was a Russian-born South African industrialist and financier. Life history Born the son of a Jewish tailor in 1844 in Neustadt-Sugind, Russian Empire (now Lithuania), Marks was endowed with integrity, courage, astonishing business acumen and immense vitality. He accompanied some horses to Sheffield in England while still a youth and, not wanting to return to the Jewish persecution in the Russian Empire, decided to stay on. It was in Sheffield that he met his future in-laws. Hearing news of the diamond discoveries in Kimberley, he arrived at the Cape in 1869 and was shortly followed by his cousin Isaac Lewis, also from Neustadt-Sugind, with whom he forged the enduring partnership of ''Lewis & Marks''. Marks started his career as a peddler in the rural districts of the Cape, but soon headed for Kimberley where his rise to prosperity began. They made a modest living supplying goods to mines and diggers, and later branched int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dale Lace
Colonel John Dale Lace (27 November 1859 – 5 June 1937) was a South African gold and diamond mining magnate and Randlord. He was born in Port St Mary Port St Mary ( or ''Purt-noo-Moirrey'' ) is a village district in the south-west of the Isle of Man. The village takes its name from the former Chapel of St Mary () which is thought to have overlooked Chapel Bay in the village. Its population ... on the Isle of Man. Career Dale Lace came to South Africa as an employee of the Bank of Africa. Dale Lace built a fortune in the diamond industry. He would depart Kimberley for the Witwatersrand Goldfields. During 1895 until 1896, he was a member of the Johannesburg Reform Committee agitating for better rights for Uitlanders in the South African Republic. A consequence of this action resulted in the Jameson Raid and would accompany a British Agent with a message to the raiders expressing the Colonial Secretary's disapproval of the raid. When the raid failed, he was one of many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solomon Joel
Solomon Barnato Joel (23 May 1865 – 22 May 1931) was a British-South African business magnate. He moved to Cape Colony in the 1880s where he made his fortune in connection with diamonds, later becoming a financier with interests in mining, brewing and railways. Career Known as "Solly", he was born into a Jewish family in London, one of three sons of Joel Joel, a publican and keeper of the King of Prussia tavern, and Kate Isaacs, who was a sister of Barnett Isaacs, later to be called Barney Barnato. Along with his two brothers, Jack and Woolf, Solly was mentored by Barney Barnato and made a fortune from the Barnato Diamond Mining Company in South Africa. Within 10 years, he had become a millionaire, primarily by buying seemingly worked-out diamond mines. On Barney Barnato's death in 1897, Joel became head of the family business, the Barnato Brothers. Despite his keen interest in diamonds, he played a greater role in the South African gold mining industry. He established the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
