Rothschild's De Beers Consolidated: Exploited Miners In South Africa |
“…Throughout the 19th-century, all 5 Houses of Rothschild were involved in the precious metals trade…By virtue of its gold and diamond fields, South Africa became one of the domains in which the London branch operated. The Rothschilds occupied such an important position in this market that, from 1919 until the present day [in 1994] the world price of gold has been fixed on the New Court premises of the Rothschild Bank in London.
“…Diamonds were discovered near the South African town of Kimberley in 1870…Soon the rights to the mines were owned by only 2 firms…Under the leadership of Cecil Rhodes, one of the 2 firms tried to buy the other one out. The necessary capital was put up by the English House of Rothschild. In 1889, for the sum of 1.4 million pounds, the French firm was incorporated into a new company, De Beers Consolidated, which now held a monopoly of diamond mining in Kimberley. The Rothschilds were the company’s largest shareholders…”
In his 1962 book, The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait, Frederic Morton also indicated how the Rothschild Dynasty obtained in the 19th-century much of the wealth that was later used to help fund the Zionist movement’s settler-colonialist activity in the 20th-century, in the following way:
“…In England, N.M. Rothschild & Sons invested heavily in Indian mines; it financed Cecil Rhodes’ diamond dominion in South Africa (a burly uncut diamond still lives on the mantel of the Partners’ Room in New Court, and the house is still connected with de Beers; its banking and loan operations covered most of South America. In France, de Rothschild Freres went into the electrical industries, developed the Mediterranean Railway, branched out to North Africa and exerted such control over the Baku oil fields in Russia that the French family was for a number of years a principal competitor of the Rockefeller trust. In Austria, S.M. Rothschild und Sohne extended its scope into Hungary through the famous 6 percent Gold Loan of 1881; the Creditansalt…grew to be a…giant subsidiary of the Family bank and became a financial force in every corner of the Habsburg realm…”
The Rothschild Dynasty also apparently obtained some of the surplus wealth, that it used to help fund the Zionist movement’s settler-colonist projects in Palestine, by profiting from its involvement with and investments in the weapons manufacturing industry and from war-profiteering. As Niall Ferguson recalled in his 1999 book The House of Rothschild: The World’s Bankers 1849-1999:
“There is no doubt that the Rothschilds had their own economic interests in…rearmament. In 1888 the London house issued shares worth 225,000 pounds for the Naval Construction and Armaments Company and subsequently issued 1.9 million pounds of shares and debentures to finance the merger of the Maxim Gun Company with the Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company…Natty [Rothschild] retained a substantial shareholding in the new Maxim-Nordenhelt company and exerted a direct influence over the firm’s management. The wider significance of this lies in the fact that Maxim-Nordenfelt’s flagship product was the lethal automatic gun, used to devastating effect against opponents of British imperial expansion from the Sudan to Matabeleland, and famously cited by Hilaire Belloc as the key to Euroopean hegemony. Similarly,…Rothschilds also financed the Vickers brothers’ takeover of the company (along with the Naval Construction and Armaments Company) in 1897…“The Austrian Rothschilds also had an interest in the arms industry. In addition to their railway interests, they retained a substantial stake in the Witkowitz ironworks, which became an important supplier of iron and steel to the Austrian navy and later of bullets to the Austrian army…If the 19th-century imperialism had its `military-industrial complex’ the Rothschilds were unquestionably part of it…”
(end of part 7)
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