Robert's People: The Life Of Sir Robert Williams, Bart, 1860-1938 By Robert Hutchinson & George Martelli
Robert's People: The Life Of Sir Robert Williams, Bart, 1860-1938 (First Edition Hardcover Copy)
An Essential Piece of Africana History Documenting the Pioneering Days of the Kimberley Diamonds, the Rand Goldfields, and the Benguela Railway
An Essential Piece of Africana History Documenting the Pioneering Days of the Kimberley Diamonds, the Rand Goldfields, and the Benguela Railway
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Robert's People: The Life Of Sir Robert Williams, Bart, 1860-1938
- Authors: Robert Hutchinson & George Martelli
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus Ltd, London
- Publication Date: 1971
- ISBN-10: 0701117583
- ISBN-13: 9780701117581
- Edition Details: First UK Edition, First Printing. Standard hardcover release with original unclipped dust jacket.
- Binding: Original publisher's premium textured cloth boards with crisp gold gilt-stamped lettering across the spine, complete with structurally sound endpapers.
- Physical Format: Octavo (8vo), 254 pages. Enhanced with essential historical maps detailing early mining concessions, comprehensive structural diagrams of the Benguela Railway development, and central sections featuring rare black-and-white archival photographic plates.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
- Exterior / Cloth Boards: The cloth casing remains in exceptional condition, sitting flat, square, and highly structurally sound. The corners show only microscopic storage friction, and the spine ends are crisp. The spine itself remains completely unbroken and undamaged, retaining its original rigidity.
- Interior: The text block is robustly bound, perfectly clean, and tight. The internal pages, maps, and photographic reference plates are clean, crisp, and intact. Free of standard user highlighting, ink underlining, dealer pencil marks, or dog-ears.
- Provenance: An exemplary, well-maintained collectible copy showing no evidence of remainder marks, institutional library stamps, or previous owner nameplates.
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The Dust Jacket: Very Good Plus (VG+)
- Condition Details: The original vintage 1971 dust jacket exhibits vibrant graphics and strong paper structural integrity. It shows very limited, superficial signs of handling and slight edge wear along the outer extremities. It features no significant tears, fading, or open chips, and comes protected in a clear, archival Cellophane cover.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Published in 1971 and built directly upon his own extensive, unpublished personal memoirs, Robert's People is an invaluable, primary-source contribution to early Southern and Central African history. The narrative delivers a vivid first-hand account of Sir Robert Williams' arrival in 1881 as a young mining engineer, tracking his early days in the rough-and-tumble diamond camps of Kimberley and the burgeoning goldfields of the Witwatersrand.
As a close ally of Cecil John Rhodes, Williams became a premier pioneer explorer, navigating unexplored regions of Central Africa, discovering the massive copper deposits of Katanga, and financing the legendary Benguela Railway to link the African interior to the Atlantic coast. This biography strips away standard colonial mythology to shed fascinating new light on major historical figures, detailing his complex dealings with Rhodes, King Leopold II of Belgium, and General Jan Smuts, alongside his surprising interactions with Frances, Countess of Warwick. It stands as a crucial chronicle of the intense corporate, geopolitical, and engineering battles that shaped the modern African industrial landscape.
Author Profile: Robert Hutchinson & George Martelli
- Robert Hutchinson was a dedicated historical researcher and archivist who specialized in editing private family papers and mapping out corporate archival assets linked to the early British mining industry.
- George Martelli (1903–1989) was an acclaimed British author, journalist, and intelligence officer. Educated at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, he served as a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post and wrote several definitive historical volumes on Central Africa, including Leopold to Lumumba: A History of the Belgian Congo. His works are highly praised for their narrative speed, clarity of investigative prose, and deep reliance on primary governmental documentation.
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