Cecil John Rhodes

Cecil John Rhodes (July 5 1853 – March 26 1902Death Of Mr. Rhodes, The Times, 27 March 1902; pg. 7) was British businessman, mining magnate, politician and the colonizer of the state of Rhodesia, which was named after him. Rhodesia (later Northern and Southern Rhodesia) eventually became Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Rhodes profited greatly by exploiting Southern Africa's natural resources, proceeds of which founded the Rhodes Scholarship upon his death. Rhodes is famous for having declared: "all of these stars... these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets". S. Gertrude Millin, Rhodes, London, 1933, p.138

When he died in 1902, Rhodes was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world.

England

Rhodes was the son of Francis William Rhodes, a vicar in the Church of England at the local church, St. Michael's, and his wife Louisa Peacock Rhodes. He had a brother named Arthur, another one named Herbert, and another brother named Frank. Rhodes attended the grammar school at Bishop's Stortford. He fell ill shortly after leaving school, and, as his lungs were weak, it was decided that he should visit his brother Herbert who had recently emigrated to Natal, in Southern Africa. He arrived in Durban on 1 September, 1870, bringing with him £3,000£3,000 (1870) = ~£186,000 (2004) =~ $324,000 (^*) that his aunt had lent him. He invested that money in diamond diggings in Kimberley.

South Africa

After a brief stay with the Surveyor-General of Natal, Dr. P. C. Sutherland, in Pietermaritzburg, Rhodes took an interest in agriculture and joined his brother Herbert on his cotton farm in the Umkomaas valley in Natal. In the colony he established the Rhodes Fruit Farms in the Stellenbosch district. In October 1871 Rhodes left the colony for the diamond fields of Kimberley. He supervised the working of his brother's claim and speculated on his behalf. Among his associates in the early days were John X. Merriman and C. D. Rudd, who later became his partner in the De Beers Mining Company and Niger Oil Company.

Education

In 1873 Rhodes left his diamond fields in the care of his partner, Rudd, and sailed for England to complete his studies. He was admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term in 1873, returning for his second term in 1876. He was greatly influenced by John Ruskin's inaugural lecture at Oxford, which reinforced his own attachment to the cause of British imperialism. Among his Oxford associates were Rochefort Maguire, later a fellow of All Souls College and a director of the British South Africa Company, and Charles Metcalfe. His university career engendered in him an admiration for the Oxford "system" which was eventually to mature into his scholarship scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye — except in science — an Oxford man is at the top of the tree". While attending Oxford Rhodes joined a secret fraternity called Freemasonry. Although his initial view of it was not positive he continued to be a Freemason until his death in 1902. He was appalled by the fact that the Masons had so much influence and yet they did not use it to try to make changes in society and he disliked Masonry because it was apolitical. But he later decided to start his own secret society with the goal of bringing the entire world under British rule. He said that the Masons and the Jesuits both helped inspire it.

Diamonds

Whilst at Oxford, Rhodes continued to prosper in Kimberley. Before his departure for Oxford he and C. D. Rudd had moved from the Kimberley mine to invest in the more costly claims of what was known as old De Beers (Vooruitzicht) which owed its name to Johannes Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus de Beer, the original owners of the Vooruitzicht farm.

In 1874 and 1875 the diamond fields were in the grip of depression, but Rhodes and Rudd were among those who stayed to consolidate their interests. They believed that diamonds would be numerous in the hard blue ground that had been exposed after the softer, yellow layer near the surface had been worked out. During this time the technical problem of clearing out the water that was flooding the mines became serious and he and Rudd obtained the contract for pumping the water out of the three main mines.

In April 1880 Rhodes and Rudd launched the De Beers Mining Company after the amalgamation of a number of individual claims. With £200,000£200,000 (1880) = ~£12.9m (2004) =~ $22.5m (^*) of capital, the Company, of which Rhodes was secretary, owned the largest interest in the mine.

Politics

In 1880 Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. With the incorporation of Griqualand West into the Cape Colony in 1877, the area obtained six seats in the Cape House of Assembly. Rhodes chose the constituency of Barkly West, a rural constituency in which Boer voters predominated. Barkly West remained faithful to Rhodes even after the Jameson Raid, and he continued as its member until his death.

The chief preoccupation of the Cape Parliament when Rhodes became a member was the future of Basutoland, where the ministry of Sir Gordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after a rebellion, the Gun War, in 1880. The ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its disarmament policy to the Basuto. In 1890 Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and implemented laws that would benefit mine and industry owners. He introduced the Glen Grey Act to push Black people from their lands and make way for industrial development.

Rhodes' policies were instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South Africa. He did not, however, have direct political power over the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. He often disagreed with the Transvaal government's policies, and felt he could use his money and his power to overthrow the Boer government and install a British colonial government supporting mine-owners' interests in its place. In 1895 Rhodes supported an attack on the Transvaal, the infamous Jameson Raid. It was a failure, and Rhodes had to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape.

Rhodesia

Rhodes used his wealth to pursue his dream of creating a British Empire in Africa. His British South Africa Company, which had its own paramilitary police force, was used to control Mashonaland, in present-day Zimbabwe. The company had hoped to start a "new Rand" from the ancient gold mines of the Mashona, but the gold had been largely depleted long before, so many of the white settlers who accompanied the British South Africa Company to Mashonaland became farmers. When the Matabele and the Mashona rebelled against the coming of the white settlers to their land, the British South Africa Company crushed them. The conquered land was named "Rhodesia" in honour of Cecil Rhodes. As the company's influence extended north, land north of the Zambezi was claimed by the company, and named Northern Rhodesia. Today, these territories form the states of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Vision and views

Rhodes' vision for Africa was "to paint the map (British) red". To achieve this goal, he was very instrumental in the development of a Cape-Cairo railway route. In his 1877 "Confession of Faith", Rhodes stated, "I contend that we (the British) are the finest race in the world; and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race". However this prejudice against the African people probably did not motivate his conquests. Ironically even though he was a staunch British imperialist Rhodes supported Home Rule for Ireland and was a supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell, a member of the British House of Commons from Ireland and the leader of the Irish nationalists, even after most of Parnell's supporters were demanding that he resign because of a scandal.

Princess Radziwill

In the last years of his life Rhodes was stalked by a Polish princess named Catherine Radziwill (1858-1941), who came from a noble Polish-Lithuanian dynasty called Radziwiłł. Radziwill falsely claimed to people that she was engaged to Rhodes, or that they were having an affair. She asked him to marry her, but Rhodes refused. She eventually got revenge by falsely accusing him of loan fraud. He had to go to trial and testify against her accusation. He died shortly after the trial in 1902. She wrote a biography of Rhodes called Cecil Rhodes:Man and Empire Maker. Her accusations were eventually proven false.

Rhodes' will and the Rhodes Scholarship

Although Rhodes remained a leading figure in the politics of southern Africa, especially during the Second Boer War, he was dogged by ill health throughout his relatively short life.

In his will, he left his money for the establishment of a secret society that would enable Britain to rule the entire productive world. The exact words are as follows:

To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.

As a result of his will, the Rhodes Scholarships, which enable foreign nationals to study at the University of Oxford, came into being. Rhodes died in 1902, and was considered at the time one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Rhodes' will also left a large area of land on the slopes of Table Mountain to the South African nation. Part of this estate became the upper campus of the University of Cape Town, part became the Kirstenbosch gardens, while much was spared from development and is now an important conservation area. Rhodes Memorial stands on Rhodes' favourite spot on the slopes of Devil's Peak, with a view looking north and east towards the Cape to Cairo route. Rhodes' house in Cape Town, Groote Schuur, is now the official residence of the President of South Africa. The cottage in Muizenberg where he died is a national monument. Rhodes was laid to rest at World's View, a hilltop located approximately 35 kilometers south of Bulawayo, in what was then Rhodesia. Today, his gravesite is part of Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe.

In 2004, he was voted 56th in the SABC3's Great South Africans.

Popular culture

The will of Cecil Rhodes is the central theme in the science fiction book Great Work of Time by John Crowley, an alternate history in which the Secret Society stipulated in the will was indeed established. Its members eventually achieve the secret of time travel and use it to restrain World War I and prevent World War II, and to perpetuate the world ascendancy of the British Empire up to the end of the Twentieth Century. The book contains a vivid description of Cecil Rhodes himself, seen through the eyes of a traveler from the future British Empire.

In 1996, BBC-TV made an eight-part television drama about Rhodes called Rhodes:The Life and Legend of Cecil Rhodes. It was produced by David Drury and written by Antony Thomas. In it Rhodes was played by Martin Shaw. It premiered on PBS in 1998.

References

Complete Works of Mark Twain. Following the Equator (Part 2). Chapter XIII. Cecil Rhodes' Shark and his First Fortune; Chapter LXIX. The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces;

External links

Banquet in Rhodes' honour held in London 1895
http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/africa/063099/063099monicarhodes.html
http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/rhodes-cj.htm
http://www.bartleby.com/65/rh/Rhodes-C.html
http://www.pbase.com/glassbottle/rhodes_memorial Photographs of Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town, South Africa

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