Download Cecil Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes
British financier and empire builder Cecil Rhodes dominated the politics of
British South Africa at the end of the 19th century. The founder of the
international diamond business, Rhodes was also a prodigious philanthropist.
He named two of the colonies that he created, Northern and Southern
Rhodesia, after himself.
Rhodes was born in Hertfordshire, England on July 5, 1853. He was one of 11
children of an Anglican priest. As a child, Rhodes suffered from an unknown
respiratory ailment and was sent to live with his brother in South Africa in 1870
in the hopes that the African climate would improve his health. After working
briefly on his brother's cotton farm in Natal, Rhodes moved on to Kimberly, the
site of recent discoveries of diamonds and a growing boom-town. Rhodes
established himself as an independent miner and began buying up the claims of his competitors. Within
two years, he had earned a small fortune. In 1873, he returned to England to attend Oxford University.
Over the next eight years, he traveled between Kimberly and England, alternately supervising his mining
operations and continuing the studies that he completed in 1881.
Rhodes was a skillful speculator and businessman, and in 1880, he joined forces with another successful
mining magnate, Alfred Beit, to form the De Beers mining company. When Rhodes bought out his chief
competitor in 1888, his De Beers Consolidated Mines controlled 90% of the world's diamond supply.
Rhodes also acquired a major stake in the booming gold industry of the neighboring Transvaal. By 1890,
Rhodes was one of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the world.
Possessed of an almost mystical zeal for imperialism and Anglo-Saxon supremacy, Rhodes sought to
expand the British Empire throughout South Africa as he used his money to promote his own political
career. In 1880, Rhodes was elected to the Cape Parliament, and in 1890, he became the prime minister
of the Cape Colony. In parliament, he supported the extension of British control throughout the region
and played an instrumental role in extending British rule into Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana) in
1884.
When the British government expressed little enthusiasm for an expansionist policy, Rhodes decided to
take matters into his own hands. In 1888, his agents signed a treaty with the Ndebele King Lobengula
granting Rhodes' company exclusive mineral rights in his kingdom. Rhodes used this treaty to pressure
the British government into granting him a Royal Charter in 1889. The charter recognized the rights of
Rhodes' new company, the British South Africa Company, to administer territory in the regions north of
the Limpopo river. Rhodes then sent his agents to sign treaties with the Lozi and Lunda chiefs north of
the Zambezi river. He also mounted a military expedition into the lands of Lobenguela north of the
Limpopo river to prospect for minerals. This heavily armed column of "pioneers" came into conflict with
Lobengula and subsequently overwhelmed his armies in 1893. This campaign established the company's
dominance in the region. In 1894, Leland Starr Jameson, a close associate of Rhodes and the leader of
the pioneer column, named the new colony Rhodesia.
As a politician, Rhodes sought to unify the territories of South Africa into one British-dominated
federation. He became frustrated with the conservative Afrikaners, a people of Dutch origins, many of
whom fiercely resisted British domination. His opposition to Afrikaner intransigence intensified after gold
was discovered in the Transvaal Republic in 1887. The Transvaal was a sparsely populated and primitive
republic ruled by the conservative Afrikaner Paul Kruger. Foreign miners rushed into the new city of
Johannesburg and threatened to overwhelm the tiny republic. The Afrikaner government heavily taxed
the mining operations and denied the new immigrants any voice in the republic's politics. Rhodes, fearing
that the wealth generated by the gold fields would tip the political balance in the region in favor of the
Afrikaners, began to plot the overthrow of Kruger's regime. In 1895, a military force led by Jameson
invaded the Transvaal from Rhodesia. The Afrikaners easily repulsed the invasion and arrested Jameson
and his men. Rhodes was implicated in the plot and was forced to resign as prime minister. His attempt
to undermine the Kruger regime infuriated many Afrikaner politicians and helped poison relations
between the Afrikaners and English at Cape Town. This split ultimately led to the Boer War in 1899.
The raid also indirectly inspired a revolt in Rhodesia. Many of the colony's troopers had joined Jameson's
ill-fated raid, and in their absence, the Shona and Ndebele rose up against their new oppressors in 1896.
Facing a desperate situation, Rhodes traveled into the heart of Matabeleland, where he negotiated a
truce with the Ndebele in 1897.
Rhodes died on March 26, 1902. Historians have speculated that he suffered from a hole in his heart.
The two colonies named for him eventually achieved their independence and changed their names to
Zambia and Zimbabwe. Rhodes is also remembered for his philanthropy, particularly the Rhodes'
scholarships, which are awarded annually to U.S. and Commonwealth students to study at Oxford
University.
References:
Meredith, Martin, The Past Is Another Country: Rhodesia 1890-1979, 1979; Thomas, Anthony, Rhodes:
The Race For Africa, 1997; Thompson, Leonard, History of South Africa, 1990