For more than a century following its discovery, South Africa held little interest for the imperial powers of Europe. When gold was discovered there toward the end of the nineteenth century, the territory suddenly became one of the most hotly contested pieces of real estate in the world. Fuelling the Empire tells the story of the South African gold rush, the vast political and economic forces it set in motion, and the devastating military conflict to which it gave riseā the Boer War, the first large-scale human tragedy of the twentieth century.