British ImperialismIn many ways, the Boer War resembles the struggle toward globalization a century later that Friedman describes in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The British, with their more advanced industry and technology, attempted to move the Boer republics away from the olive tree and into the new global economy, golden straightjacket and all. The British Empire had high stakes in the conflict and ultimately achieved its main objectives. He protected his position at the Cape, essential for controlling the southern trade route to India, and resisted threats from an increased European presence in South Africa as well as the threat of Afrikaner nationalism in the Cape Colony and in the Boer republics which bordered it. British investors held approximately half the capital of the Boer Republics' mining industries, so protection of the industry was vital not only to the interests of these particular investors, but more indirectly to the protection of world free trade, on on which the British economy rested. . With mines operating as efficiently as possible, more gold could be produced and released to the world market, which favored Britain as a leader in the world economy. But just as Friedman must address the concerns, in the 1990s, of those who are late entrants to the global economy, so we must address the concerns of those who represent the olive tree in South Africa; namely Boers and indigenous black Africans. While Friedman insists that globalization ultimately empowers individuals through the democratization of technology, political processes, finance, and information, Boers and blacks appear, in different ways, to be very limited in their power in the short term. Friedm... middle of paper ... but after the war, black people were deprived of economic empowerment because Boer racism was legally protected. Friedman's identifications of actors in the fight against globalization in the late 20th century apply to actors in South Africa at the time of the Boer War, but Friedman's optimism is not borne out by the facts. As South Africa became an increasingly industrialized society, certain social elements dominated economic changes to prevent the full emancipation of black people, particularly as Friedman predicted. The long-term results in South Africa – the resurgence of Boer nationalism in the 1940s that brought about apartheid, and the movement forty years later to end apartheid – reveal that racism and political ideology conservative have been more powerful forces than globalization and industrialization in shaping lives. and future for black people in South Africa.