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Cecil Rhodes (Cecil John Rhodes) was born July 5th, 1853 in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England where his father was a clergyman. The fifth son amongst a family of nine children he was afforded a grammar school education until he was diagnosed with a tubercular lung condition at age sixteen and doctors advised his parents to send him out to South Africa so as to benefit from the country's drier climate.

In 1870 Rhodes sailed off to southern Africa where he joined his eldest brother Herbert, who was trying his hand at farming in the coastal region of Natal. In the same year, diamonds - which had unexpectedly been discovered for the first time in southern Africa two years before - were suddenly being found in staggering quantities in the inland area now known as Kimberley. When Cecil arrived in Durban in September he found that Herbert had already departed for the diamond area. When Herbert returned to where Cecil was lodging with friends he related that he had had only a very little success diamond hunting.

In March 1871 Herbert left again for the diamond fields whilst Cecil remained tending crops expecting to earn a return sufficient to meet the cost of a university education. In happened however that crop prices fell dramatically leaving no chance of profit and in October Cecil followed Herbert in seeking his fortune as a diamond hunter.

By 1873 Rhodes finances were sufficiently established through his involvements in the diamond fields as to fund his hoped for education and he travelled back to England to pursue studies at Oxford University's Oriel College. It happened however that his health was again very seriously threatened, this time as a result of a bout of pneumonia contracted after a wet day's rowing on the river Thames, and he had to spend some more time in Africa returning periodically to work towards his degree.

Alongside his own control of several diamond workings Rhodes also proved to be an astute businessman. At one time he arranged for the largest capacity water pump in southern Africa to be hauled to Kimberly where it was used in keeping diamond workings open during the seasonal rains. In the dry season this pump was able to be used in the production of a scarce and desireable commodity - Ice Cream.

Rhodes was instrumental in amalgamating the major mining interests of Kimberley into one organisation, De Beers Mining Company, which he finally established, under his own control but with a junior partner named Charles Dunell Rudd, in April 1880. A primary aim of this company being an attempt to regulate the mining and sale of diamonds. Rhodes considered that diamonds are not really intrinsically valuable and that the demand for them was essentially related to young couples looking to become engaged. Given the profusion of diamonds at Kimberly Rhodes considered that unless care were taken the market could be flooded bringing down prices.

Rhodes finally graduated in 1881 and in that same year gained one of the newly established parliamentary seats in Barkly West, near Kimberley, that he was to hold for the remainder of his life. After this election as a member of the Cape Parliament much of Rhodes' irrepressible energy was directed towards his expansionary plans - his ultimate dream being `to paint the map (British) red' from `Cape to Cairo.'

Other aspirations were also stirring in southern Africa. A numerous Dutch (Boer or Farmer) opinion being inclined to favour the formation of a United States of South Africa that was to include such Boer republics of the Transvaal. Rhodes strove to modify this aspiration towards any such Union operating within the British Empire. On May 2nd 1883 the first German protected territory outside Europe came into being when a young merchant named Fritz Luderitz acted on Bismarck's consent in extending such protection by running up the German flag over his own trading station on the Atlantic coast south of the Congo. The possibility of a rival Dutch or German colonisation to the north of Cape Colony allowed the British to view their own control of that area with favour. Rhodes' interest in expansionism led to his appointment in 1884 as resident deputy commissioner in Bechuanaland a territory to the north that Rhodes hoped to see attached to Cape Colony.

In 1888 De Beers was restructured as De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. and this company has continued to exercise a monopoly over Kimberly diamond production. Rhodes also won mining rights from the Matabele King Lobengula whose domain lay to the north of Bechuanaland.

In 1889 Cecil Rhodes formed the British South Africa Company and obtained a Royal Charter from the British Government to occupy Mashonaland. In 1890 he took office as Prime Minister of the Cape, from which office he had involvement later that year with the establishment of the British outpost of Fort Salisbury (named after the British prime minister of the day) deep in Mashonaland. By 1894 Mashonaland and neighbouring Matabeleland had been subjugated and were united under the name of Rhodesia.

In the late 1830's a number of Boers had become frustrated with the oppressive interference of their British rulers of the Cape and made a `Great Trek' northwards across the Vaal river where they hoped to live as they themselves pleased. The original Trekkers defeated a native opposition to their presence and were later joined by many Boer migrants. All of this led up to the establishment of a Transvaal Republic in 1860. Although Rhodes viewed the Transvaal Republic as an inconvenient obstacle to British expansionism in southern Africa it was, generally speaking, of little interest to anyone but their own citizens until 1887, when fabulously rich gold reefs were discovered in the Witwatersrand area.

The prospect of sudden and amazing wealth lured tens of thousands of non-Boers, many of them English, into the Transvaal to seek their fortunes. The Transvaal's president, Paul Kruger, refused to grant these 'uitlanders' (aliens) meaningful political rights, and Rhodes used this denial as an excuse to conspire to overthrow the Boer-dominated government.

He organised his close friend, Dr. Leander Jameson, to lead a column of some 500 armed men to Pretoria with the aim of triggering an insurrection against the Kruger government. The Jameson Raid, which took place in December 1895, was a complete fiasco and resulted in a polarisation of animosity between Englishman and Boer throughout the country. Rhodes was severely censured by the British government for his involvement and forced to resign his premiership of the Cape in early 1896.

In the aftermath of the Jameson Raid, Rhodes spent much of this time up in Rhodesia, where he devoted himself to the development of his beloved country. Tensions had been rapidly building up between Rhodes' pioneers and the country's indigenous Shona and Matabele population. They eventually rose up in armed revolt against the white settlers, resulting in widespread loss of life. In 1896 - in what was undoubtedly his finest hour - Rhodes and three companions rode, by invitation but unarmed, deep into a Matabele stronghold in the Matopo Hills to negotiate for peace.

In October 1899, the simmering tensions between the British and the Boers finally resulted in the outbreak of the Boer war. Rhodes was in Kimberley at the time and was trapped there during a four month siege of the town by 5,000 Boer commandos. As well as playing an important supervisory and morale-building role in the defence of Kimberley - most of whose citizens were employed by his De Beers company - he even had his workshops manufacture a special artillery piece, called `Long Cecil', to help ward off the attackers.

Rhodes, who had a weak and troublesome heart for much of his life, passed away at his beachside cottage at Muizenberg near Cape Town on March 26th, 1902 at the age of only 49. He died just two months before the end of the Anglo-Boer War. By the time of his death, Rhodes had been instrumental in bringing almost one million square miles of Africa under British dominion.

At the age of 19 Rhodes had first written out his "Last Will and Testament." This brief document, prepared at a time when Rhodes' possessions were modest indeed, included, as it's central objective, the furthering the interests of the British Empire. The Will that was valid at the time of Rhodes' death established the funding of 57 scholarships - now famous as the Rhodes Scholarships - as a practical way of attempting to meet such objective.

Rhodes actually left the greater part of his vast fortune for the establishment of these scholarships at his alma mater, Oxford University. Rhodes decreed that these scholarships were to be awarded to young men in regard to:
'literary and scholastic attainments; his fondness of, and success in, manly outdoor sports; his qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for the protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship, and his exhibition during his school days of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and take an interest in his schoolmates'.

In 1977 the British parliament legislated in relation to Rhodes' will such that more Rhodes Scholarships (94) are available and are now open to being awarded to females as well as males and also to persons of a wider range of national origins than Rhodes had himself envisaged.

Courtesy Rhodes Official Site, text edited

An Alternate View of Rhodes

“Cecil Rhodes: A Man of His Times”
Jeffrey Carlyle

Cecil John Rhodes was born into a world in which the major European powers were involved in a world wide land grab. Each European power was out for God, glory, and gold. Europe sought to bring the light of Christianity to the uncivilized world, the glory of claiming more land than their rivals, and the increased revenue of trade in new markets. Rhodes became a major leader in this land grab. Using today’s standards it easy to portray Rhodes as white-supremacist monster, but he was simply a man of his times. Cecil Rhodes incarnated many of the beliefs of the major powers of his day.

He was born the fifth son of the vicar of Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, England in 1853. The young Rhodes disappointed his father by not becoming a clergyman. Rhodes was sent to join one an elder brother who was a cotton planter Natal, South Africa. After the discovery of diamonds in South Africa he became a diamond speculator. By the time he was nineteen he had amassed a large fortune. Rhodes’ newly found fortune allowed him to attend college at Oxford University. It is here were many of his opinions on Britain’s destiny were formed. Rhodes set forth to, as he said, “paint the map red.” He wished for every part of the world to become one government under the control of the Anglo-Saxon people. Part of Rhode’s plan was to build a railway from “Cape to Cairo” in Africa. That is to bring under British control an entire North-South stretch of the African continent for the purposes of constructing a railway from the Cape of Good Hope—the southernmost point of Africa—to Cairo, Egypt in the north of Africa. Furthermore, Rhodes sought to retake the lost American colonies. He thought all he would need to do is “show them what they lost.” Rhodes was not noted as an intellectual.

Sidney Low, a contemporary journalist of Rhodes, noted that Rhodes was not an original thinker, but instead took others ideas and sold them. She had this to say of her impression of Rhodes:

It seemed to me that Rhodes’ weakness was on the intellectual side. He was not a clear reckoner or close thinker. But rather—he himself admitted—a dreamer of dreams, vague, might, somewhat impalpable. Nor did it seem to me that he was the originator of ideas, but one who took up conceptions of others, expanded them, dwelt upon them, advertised them to the world in his grandiloquent fashion, made them his own (Sowards 143)

Rhodes was an unimpressive speaker his views; however, his energy and charm impressed many that heard him. Rhodes also enjoyed talking personally with others. It is said that many of Rhodes’ enemies would become his friends after talking to him. His charm even impressed the Matabele people—a tribe that he destroyed. They said to him, “You have come again and now all things are clear, we are your children (Sowards 150).”

In 1881 he entered the Cape Colony Parliament. At the same time he was still involved in diamond mining. From his initial success he was able to purchase other mining operations. Eventually his diamond operation known as De Beers Mining Company became the second largest diamond producing company. Through shrewd business deals that included manipulating the price of diamonds, Rhodes was able to receive on loan the funds needed to purchase his larger competitor. De Beers effectively became the world’s single producer of diamonds—a position that it still holds today. The immense wealth that Rhodes amassed matched that of the so-called “robber barons” of the day. In many ways Rhodes was the greatest of the robber barons because he believed there was nothing that could not be bought with money and no one that could not be bribed.

Rhodes began his quest for northern Africa while in the Cape Colony parliament. In 1889, Rhodes entered negotiations with the Matabele people. When he found that support for his negotiations was not forth coming from either Cape Town or London, he secured a charter from Queen Victoria for the British South Africa Company, and continued the negotiations himself. In the end of negotiations he became the sovereign of nearly all of the land north of the Cape Colony and south of the Zambezi River (Sowards 139).

As Langer stated in his “The Triumph of Imperialism,” the Englishman is born believing that he is the master of the world and most fit to lead. This would be a perfect characterization of Rhodes. In Rhodes’ 1877 “Confession of Faith,” he stated, “I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.” Admittedly, this statement is very similar to statements by leaders such as Hitler; however, at the time in which this text was written this statement simply reflected the popular sentiment of most of the British people. There was already an idea in the British culture that they were superior and, as with other’s ideas Rhodes took this idea and expounded and dwelt on it. The other European powers would undoubtedly say the same of their particular nationality. If there is madness in this plan then it is not Cecil Rhodes who was a lone mad man, it is that entirety of European power was mad.

Rhodes applied the popular view of Darwinism that “dog eat dog,” the bigger dog consumes the smaller, to humanity. He believed that it was God’s will was that the more advanced races should displace or destroy the less advanced. Rhodes’ attitudes to the natives varied with the political wind. Rhodes was even once quoted as saying that the natives were no different from the Europeans; however, at other times he referred to the natives as children. The modern biographer Cloete states that all that was Nordic blonde was good to Rhodes. Cloete also states that for a relatively long amount of time, Rhodes was capable of being all things to all people. (Sowards 150) This helps to explain his contradictory statements about the natives. Rhodes was willing to co-operate with the natives and the Boers—descendants of Dutch settlers living in Africa. When dealing with Mahdi tribe, Rhodes sought not to conquer the natives, but to “square” with them—that is to pay them for their co-operation. Rhodes also negotiated with Lobengula, King of the Matabele, when he established Rhodesia (Sowards 139).

One of his dreams was to unite the British and the Boers to be united in the Cape Colony parliament. Rhodes sought to consolidate the British colonies and Boer states of South Africa into a nation. Not a nation independent of the British Empire, but another dominion of Britain similar to those created in Canada and Australia. Rhodes did not work to “Britainize” the Earth, but simply create one large state in a way similar to the United States in which separate entities—in this case the British colonies—was united under the ruler of one nation. (Sowards 143)

Rhodes downfall came when his role was discovered in a failed plot to overthrow the leader of the Boer republic of the Transvaal, Paul Kruger. Rhodes died at the age of 48 in 1902. He left over £3 million to Oxford University for the creation of the Rhodes scholarship. Cecil Rhodes was a man of times; his views and actions reflected the views and actions of other actors in the international community at his time. J. Kelly Sowards best worded the role of Rhodes by saying, “Cecil Rhodes is the most obvious embodiment of nineteenth-century British colonialism. He exemplified all its economic rapacity and political ambition, its chauvinism and paternalism, its racism and bigotry. He also exemplified the untrammelled gospel of wealth (Sowards 140).”Sowards, J. Kelly. Makers of World History Volume II. 1992. St. Martin’s Press: New York.