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Unwitting vanguard

History on the sheep’s back
by
August 2025, no. 478

Fleeced: Unravelling the history of wool and war by Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw

Rowman & Littlefield, $45 hb, 224 pp

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ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

Unwitting vanguard

History on the sheep’s back
by
August 2025, no. 478

As Mark Twain tells the story in Following the Equator (1897), Cecil Rhodes, the future magnate and politician, was down and out in Sydney in 1870. Wandering along a harbour beach, he stopped to help a fisherman land and gut a shark – in whose stomach cavity he discovered a fragment of newsprint that, days in advance of sailing ships carrying the same papers, announced the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Galvanised by this intelligence, Rhodes convinced a local wool broker to lend him the money to buy up much of that year’s Australian woolclip, a purchase that helped the future poster boy of Empire get back in the game.

Fleeced: Unravelling the history of wool and war

Fleeced: Unravelling the history of wool and war

by Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw

Rowman & Littlefield, $45 hb, 224 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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