Cecil Rhodes

English-born South African politician and industrialist

• Born: July 5, 1853
• Birthplace: Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England
• Died: March 26, 1902
• Place of death: Muizenberg, Cape Colony (now in South Africa)

An unabashed exponent of British imperialism, Rhodes was a business tycoon who used the wealth he amassed from South Africa’s diamond and goldfields to extend British influence into Central Africa, and he bequeathed his fortune to a scholarship fund bearing his name to bring the best young minds of the English-speaking world together at his beloved Oxford University.

Early Life

Cecil John Rhodes was the fifth son of an English parish vicar, Francis William Rhodes, and his second wife, Louisa Peacock. The family consisted of nine sons, four of whom entered the army, and two daughters; none of the children ever married. Cecil attended the local grammar school from 1861 to 1869 but was not an outstanding student. At sixteen, his health failed, and, rather than entering university, he was sent to South Africa.

Rhodes landed at Durban on South Africa’s east coast, on October 1, 1870, and proceeded to join his eldest brother, Herbert, who had migrated to Natal and was seeking to grow cotton there. Herbert was frequently absent from the farm, and thus while still in his teens, Cecil was made responsible for the management of the operation.

Even at this early age, Rhodes indicated those managerial skills that would make him a success in the diamond and goldfields of Southern Africa. In his spare time he continued a private reading program, for Rhodes had made a decision: He would one day return to England and pay his own way through Oxford University. These dreams, however, were momentarily circumvented. Diamonds had been discovered in the Orange Free State, in what ultimately became known as the Kimberley Division . Herbert left cotton farming for diamond prospecting in January, 1871, and Cecil followed him in October. In the fresh air of the high African veldt, the younger Rhodes recovered his health. The fear of tuberculosis that had originally taken him to Africa was never to plague him again, as long as he remained there, although he soon was to manifest a heart condition that would ultimately cost him his life. The next decade in Rhodes’s life was to be extraordinarily complex, alternating between managing the brothers’ interests in diamonds and, after 1873, matriculating at Oxford.

In October, 1873, after modest success in the Kimberley fields, Rhodes returned to Great Britain to fulfill his ambition of attending Oxford. Although frustrated in his desire to attend University College, he was recommended to and was able to gain entry into Oriel. During this first term at Oxford, Rhodes caught a chill and was diagnosed as having only six months to live; he therefore interrupted his education to return to Africa, where his lungs were no longer a problem. Over the next several years, increasing involvement in business matters in Africa prevented his returning to Oxford full time, but he kept terms whenever possible and as a result of his determination was able to pass the bachelor of arts examination in 1881. As in his grammar schooling, Rhodes was not a scholar, but these years were significant in the formation of his outlook on life.

Rhodes devoured and absorbed books or ideas that appealed to him. Three authors and their ideas made a deep impression on the Oxford undergraduate: Aristotle’s Ethics emphasized man developing his facilities to their fullest, Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) provided Rhodes with a creed that the Roman imperium had fallen on nineteenth century Great Britain’s shoulders, and John Ruskin’s lectures outlined a gospel of public service. These ideas were absorbed at Oxford, and no later experiences seem to have altered these impressions; in fact, experience seems to have strengthened them in his faith, and their influence is to be seen in the first of his wills, in 1877.

The young Rhodes is described by his contemporaries as a slender youth, retiring in nature and with absolutely no interest in women. Maturity was to increase his stature; he became a six-footer with a broad chest and a massive head with wavy brown hair that became white in his later years. Rhodes was not what would normally be considered a good speaker, seeming to dream aloud, but he was an effective one, as indicated by his ability to persuade men to his way of thinking.

Life’s Work

While Rhodes was pursuing his education, his African career made rapid progress, and he soon was to identify completely with the subcontinent. From 1874 on, he was in partnership with Charles Dunell Rudd, and gradually these two increased their Kimberley holdings, concentrating their efforts on one of the two major mines, the De Beers mine. Rhodes quickly proved to be one of the shrewdest and ablest speculators in the district, with one major rival in Barney Barnato.

The year 1874 was a difficult one in Kimberley; illness attacked the miners and problems in the mines forced many to give up, but Rhodes persevered and took advantage of others’ problems to acquire their concessions. Both Rhodes and Barnato recognized the basic problem within the diamond industry: As long as individual miners produced diamonds and sold them on an unregulated market, no real progress was possible. Both saw in an amalgamation of the mines and regulation of supply (and thus of price) the solution to the industry’s problems. To this end, on April 1, 1880, Rhodes and his associates formed the De Beers Mining Company, with œ200,000 in capital.

This was not Rhodes’s only dream. In 1875, he spent eight months traveling through Bechuanaland and the Transvaal on a trip that opened his eyes to the potential of central Southern Africa and was to shape his vision of the African future. His dream was to secure this land for English occupation, to cooperate with the Afrikaners (Boers) inhabiting the Orange Free State and Transvaal (officially known as the South African Republic), and ultimately, to create a federation of self-governing South African colonies under British rule—but not without the full assent and cooperation of the Afrikaner population. Meanwhile, Rhodes had suffered his first serious heart attack and made his first will, dated September 19, 1877. Although several later wills would be drafted, Rhodes always adhered to the basic ideas expressed in this first one: his estate’s assets were to be used to fund a society to promote

the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise… the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation of 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 hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

These ideas were to dominate his life. Within this confession of faith may be seen his dream of a British-dominated South Africa, the nucleus of the Rhodes scholarships, and, fifty years before its realization, thinking that would produce the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Meanwhile, Rhodes had taken on another obligation. In 1880, Griqualand West was absorbed into the Cape Colony, thus gaining representation in the Cape parliament. Cecil Rhodes was elected one of the two representatives for Barkly West in 1880. He took his seat in the Cape legislature the following year, and was to represent that constituency for the remainder of his life. As a member of the Cape parliament, Rhodes sought to further his African dream, maintaining the widest degree of local self-government and simultaneously organizing and promoting British colonization as a means of extending British influence and domination over the land south of the Central African lakes.

Rhodes concentrated his initial efforts on obtaining British (or Cape) control over Bechuanaland, a vast inhospitable territory north of the Orange River through which ran the only practical route to the coveted northern lands—lands that were the object of German, Portuguese, and Transvaal Afrikaner ambitions. An imperial protectorate was proclaimed over this region early in 1884, and a year later the southern portion of this territory became part of Cape Colony, with the northern portion remaining an imperial protectorate.

Within a year, new developments were to broaden Rhodes’s horizons. In 1886, gold was discovered on the Rand in the Transvaal, starting a gold rush that Rhodes was ultimately to join. Also, Rhodes was attracted to the vast expanse of territory north of the Limpopo River. This land, that of the Ndebele (or Matabele) under their king, Lobengula, became as Bechuanaland had been, the focus of attention for several powers, and on October 30, 1888, Lobengula signed a convention with the British granting them mineral rights to his land and promising to make no additional concessions.

It became clear that the London government was not interested in additional costly colonial involvement, so Rhodes inquired if a chartered company would be acceptable. On this basis, the British South Africa Company was chartered July 13, 1889, with the right to develop land between the Limpopo and Zambesi Rivers, land that was soon named Rhodesia (later, Southern Rhodesia, and now, Zimbabwe). Subsequently, this same company extended its interests beyond the Zambesi to the southern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in a further effort to bring all Africa from the Cape to Cairo under the British flag. These new acquisitions subsequently became Northern Rhodesia.

While these colonizing activities were being promoted, Rhodes was consolidating his position in the diamond mines. Gradually the De Beers Mining Company had been absorbing claims, as had Barnato at Kimberley, and it became obvious that sooner or later one of these entrepreneurs would have to absorb the other. In July, 1887, Rhodes bought out the assets of a French interest, and on March 13, 1888, Rhodes’s and Barnato’s interests were consolidated as the De Beers Consolidated Mines, with Rhodes as chairman. This company was not limited to producing and marketing diamonds; at Rhodes’s insistence, it was authorized to acquire, settle, and exploit lands in Africa and to raise and maintain such military force as necessary in the pursuit of its objectives. It was Rhodes’s companies, not the imperial or the Cape governments, that undertook the construction of a rail line into the interior as an initial step in Rhodes’s dream of a Cape to Cairo railroad.

After less than a decade in the Cape parliament, Rhodes became prime minister of the Cape in July, 1890, gaining and keeping power by the votes of both the British and Afrikaners. As prime minister, Rhodes sought to diminish as much as possible the interference of the British government in local affairs, but simultaneously he promoted the dream of an imperial federation. To this end he subscribed ten thousand pounds in 1888 to the Irish Home Rule movement; he believed Irish self-government was a necessary step on the road to imperial federation. The Cape prospered under Rhodes’s leadership, but at the end of 1895 a decision was made and a course of action adopted that was to bring his downfall. Perhaps Rhodes believed that his heart condition doomed him to an early death and that to realize his dreams more impulsive steps had to be taken.

Rhodes had vainly sought the cooperation of the Transvaal’s president, Paul Kruger, to complete the South African federation. Relations were exacerbated by the Afrikaner treatment of the foreign gold mine workers (the Uitlanders) of the Witwatersrand (at Johannesburg). Although these workers produced the wealth of the Transvaal, they were discriminated against and their needed mining supplies were heavily taxed. In December, 1895, the Uitlanders despaired of a peaceful resolution to their grievances and determined to seek reform by violence; Rhodes was asked to support this endeavor and he agreed. A plan was worked out by which Uitlanders would rebel in Johannesburg and would ask for Cape assistance to make good their claims. Meanwhile, Rhodes had sent money and arms to the Uitlanders and simultaneously authorized Dr. Leander Starr Jameson to organize the force to respond to the Johannesburg appeal.

In the confusion, Jameson launched his invasion precipitously, on December 27, 1895, and his forces were defeated and captured by Transvaal Afrikaners within ten days. Although Rhodes had no direct responsibility for the raid, he resigned his premiership on January 6, 1896. A Cape investigation in the matter condemned Rhodes’s actions, while absolving him of responsibility for the Jameson Raid; a British inquiry in 1897 found him guilty of grave breaches of duty as prime minister.

For the remainder of his life, Rhodes devoted himself to the development of Rhodesia and consolidating his loyal party in the Cape parliament. In 1896, he was personally involved in the pacification of the Ndebele and Shona revolts against company rule. With the outbreak of the South African War in October, 1899, Rhodes made his way to Kimberley and participated in the four-month siege of that city but emerged with his health broken. Business took him to Great Britain in 1901 and 1902, yet he returned to Africa to die in his adopted land at the age of forty-eight on March 26, 1902.

Significance

Cecil Rhodes’s influence did not end with his death. His major legacy was the scholarships to Oxford that bear his name. Except for small personal bequests, the overwhelming bulk of his fortune of approximately six million pounds was left to public service. Part represents the Rhodes scholarships: two students from each state or territory in the United States, three from each of eighteen British colonies, and an additional fifteen from Germany were granted Oxford scholarships. This plan was the final result of that boyish dream outlined in the first will of 1877 to create a society to promote Great Britain’s worldwide position. Additional sums were left to Oriel College, and land was bequeathed to provide for a university in Rhodesia.

Although Rhodes’s hasty actions in 1895 doomed the immediate federation of the two English colonies and two Afrikaner republics, this scheme remained in the forefront of his mind. The restoration of responsible government and the federation of the four states into the Union of South Africa in 1909 represented a posthumous and partial fulfillment of Rhodes’s dreams. Developments in South Africa since 1960 have deviated from his dreams.

Rather than becoming part of a British-dominated Africa, Bechuanaland and the two Rhodesias became independent: Northern Rhodesia as Zambia (1964), Bechuanaland as Botswana (1966), and Southern Rhodesia as Zimbabwe (1980). Even Rhodes’s beloved Cape (as a component of the Union of South Africa) declared its status as an independent republic in 1961, thus severing ties with Great Britain.

The most important piece of legislation enacted during Rhodes’s premiership has influenced attitudes toward Africans ever since. This act, the Glen Grey Act of 1894, provided the blueprint for the modern apartheid system adopted by the South African government in 1948. Rhodes believed that the African must be disciplined by work and must be relegated to his own districts where he would be allowed to own property. No matter how much they might prosper, Africans would never gain the Cape franchise and would be allowed to vote only for their local councils. Thus the native homeland (Bantustan) policy of the South African government also stems from a decision reached by Rhodes.

Bibliography

Flint, John. Cecil Rhodes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. A volume in the Library of World Biography. Flint approaches his protagonist as a fascinating case study of a self-made man who bartered wealth for political power and who manipulated British imperialism for his own ends. Critical, with a low regard for Rhodes’s abilities.

Galbraith, John S. Crown and Charter: Early Years of the British South African Company. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Example of the newer specialized studies regarding Rhodes and his activities; focuses on the internal policies and motives of the British South Africa Company and suggests deceitful dealings by the company and its agents with African societies.

Gross, Felix. Rhodes of Africa. New York: Praeger, 1957. Written by a South African journalist, this book lacks the documentation needed to support its generally critical approach to Rhodes; views him as an unscrupulous adventurer and hints at shady financial dealings and homosexual tendencies.

Leasor, James. Rhodes and Barnato: Architects of Empire. London: Leo Cooper, 1997. Compares and contrasts the careers and personalities of two Englishmen who made their fortunes in the South African diamond industry—Rhodes and Barney Barnato, a part-time boxer and music hall comedian who became one of England’s wealthiest tycoons.

Millin, Sarah Gertrude. Cecil Rhodes. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1933. A fair and impressionistic biography appropriate for the chaotic life of the subject; written by one who loved Africa as much as Rhodes did. More concerned with Rhodes’s personal side than Williams is.

Porter, Bernard. The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-1983. 2d ed. New York: Longman, 1984. Brief, judicious general history of the British Empire during the age of the New Imperialism, allowing comparison of Rhodes’s activities in Africa with events in other areas.

Thomas, Anthony. Rhodes. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Balanced biography written by a South African documentary film producer. Thomas criticizes Rhodes’s racist and politically corrupt methods of building white-dominated states, but appreciates his subject’s forceful personality.

Williams, Basil. Cecil Rhodes. London: Constable, 1921. The first academic study of Rhodes, written by an author who was acquainted with Rhodes and most of the personalities figuring in the biography. The work is not uncritical, especially of the Jameson Raid, but is still largely an apologia for Rhodes and his work.

Wilson, Monica, and Leonard Thompson, eds. The Oxford History of South Africa. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969, 1971. The second volume, dealing with the period after 1870, is useful in providing a detailed background for Rhodes’s career and impact on South Africa.