History - Cecil John Rhodes (CJR)
Cecil John Rhodes PC (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was a British
businessman, mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served
as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. An ardent
believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his British South Africa
Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe
and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895. South Africa's
Rhodes University is also named after him. Rhodes set up the provisions
of the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate, and put much
effort towards his vision of a Cape to Cairo Railway through British
territory.
The son of a vicar, Rhodes grew up in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire,
and was a sickly child. He was sent to South Africa by his family when
he was 17 years old in the hope that the climate might improve his
health. He entered the diamond trade at Kimberley in 1871, when he was
18, and over the next two decades gained near-complete domination of the
world diamond market. His De Beers diamond company, formed in 1888,
retains its prominence into the 21st century.
Rhodes entered the Cape Parliament in 1880, and a decade later became
Prime Minister. After overseeing the formation of Rhodesia during the
early 1890s, he was forced to resign as Prime Minister in 1896 after the
disastrous Jameson Raid, an unauthorised attack on Paul Kruger's South
African Republic (or Transvaal).
One of Rhodes's primary motivators in politics and business was his
professed belief that the Anglo-Saxon race was, to quote his will, "the
first race in the world". Under the reasoning that "the more of the
world we inhabit the better it is for the human race", he advocated
vigorous settler colonialism and ultimately a reformation of the British
Empire so that each component would be self-governing and represented in
a single parliament in London. Ambitions such as these, juxtaposed with
his policies regarding indigenous Africans in the Cape Colony—describing
the country's black population as largely "in a state of barbarism", he
advocated their governance as a "subject race", and was at the centre of
moves to marginalise them politically—have led recent critics to
characterise him as a white supremacist and "an architect of apartheid".
Historian Richard A. McFarlane has called Rhodes "as integral a
participant in southern African and British imperial history as George
Washington or Abraham Lincoln are in their respective eras in United
States history."
After Rhodes's death in 1902, at the age of 48, he was buried in the
Matopos Hills in what is now Zimbabwe.
Education
A portrait bust of Rhodes on the first floor of No. 6 King Edward Street
marks the place of his residence whilst in Oxford.
In 1873, Rhodes left his farm field in the care of his business partner,
Rudd, and sailed for England to study at university. He was admitted to
Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term in 1873. He returned
to South Africa and did not return for his second term at Oxford until
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 James Rochfort Maguire, later a fellow
of All Souls College and a director of the British South Africa Company,
and Charles Metcalfe. Due to his university career, Rhodes admired the
Oxford "system". Eventually he was inspired to develop his scholarship
scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye—except in science—an Oxford man is
at the top of the tree".
While attending Oriel College, Rhodes became a Freemason in the Apollo
University Lodge. Although initially he did not approve of the
organisation, he continued to be a South African Freemason until his
death in 1902. The shortcomings of the Freemasons, in his opinion, later
caused him to envisage his own secret society with the goal of bringing
the entire world under British rule. According to Carroll Quigley, he
set up the Round Table movement to this end.
Politics in South Africa
In 1880, Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. With the
earlier incorporation of Griqualand West into the Cape Colony under the
Molteno Ministry in 1877, the area had obtained six seats in the Cape
House of Assembly. Rhodes chose the rural and predominately Boer
constituency of Barkly West, which would remain faithful to Rhodes until
his death.
When Rhodes became a member of the Cape Parliament, the chief goal of
the assembly was to help decide the future of Basutoland. The ministry
of Sir Gordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after the 1880
rebellion known as the Gun War. The Sprigg ministry had precipitated the
revolt by applying its policy of disarming all native Africans to those
of the Basotho nation.
In 1890, Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. He introduced
the Glen Grey Act to push black people from their lands and make way for
industrial development. Rhodes's view was that black people needed to be
driven off their land to "stimulate them to labour" and to change their
habits. "It must be brought home to them", Rhodes said, "that in future
nine-tenths of them will have to spend their lives in manual labour, and
the sooner that is brought home to them the better."
The growing number of enfranchised black people in the Cape led him to
raise the franchise requirements in 1892 to counter this preponderance,
with drastic effects on the traditional Cape Qualified Franchise. By
simultaneously limiting the amount of land black Africans were legally
allowed to hold while tripling the property qualifications required to
vote, Rhodes succeeded in disenfranchising the black population, as, to
quote Richard Dowden, most would now "find it almost impossible to get
back on the list because of the legal limit on the amount of land they
could hold". In addition, Rhodes was an early architect of the Natives
Land Act, 1913, which would limit the areas of the country that black
Africans were allowed to less than 10%. At the time, Rhodes would argue
that "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise.
We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our
relations with the barbarism of South Africa."
Rhodes also introduced educational reform to the area. His policies were
instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South
Africa, such as the Hut tax.
Rhodes did not, however, have direct political power over the
independent Boer Republic of the Transvaal. He often disagreed with the
Transvaal government's policies, which he considered unsupportive of
mine-owners' interests. In 1895, believing he could use his influence to
overthrow the Boer government, Rhodes supported the infamous Jameson
Raid, an attack on the Transvaal with the tacit approval of Secretary of
State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain. The raid was a catastrophic
failure. It forced Cecil Rhodes to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape
Colony, sent his oldest brother Col. Frank Rhodes to jail in Transvaal
convicted of high treason and nearly sentenced to death, and contributed
to the outbreak of the Second Boer War.
In 1899, he was sued by a man named Burrows for falsely representing the
purpose of the raid and therefore convincing him to participate in the
raid, wherein he lost a leg. His suit for £3000 in damages was
successful.
Expanding the British Empire
"The Rhodes Colossus" – cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne, published in
Punch after Rhodes announced plans for a telegraph line from Cape Town
to Cairo in 1892.
Rhodes used his wealth and that of his business partner Alfred Beit and
other investors to pursue his dream of creating a British Empire in new
territories to the north by obtaining mineral concessions from the most
powerful indigenous chiefs. Rhodes' competitive advantage over other
mineral prospecting companies was his combination of wealth and astute
political instincts, also called the 'imperial factor', as he often
collaborated with the British Government. He befriended its local
representatives, the British Commissioners, and through them organised
British protectorates over the mineral concession areas via separate but
related treaties. In this way he obtained both legality and security for
mining operations. He could then attract more investors. Imperial
expansion and capital investment went hand in hand.
The imperial factor was a double-edged sword: Rhodes did not want the
bureaucrats of the Colonial Office in London to interfere in the Empire
in Africa. He wanted British settlers and local politicians and
governors to run it. This put him on a collision course with many in
Britain, as well as with British missionaries, who favoured what they
saw as the more ethical direct rule from London. Rhodes prevailed
because he would pay the cost of administering the territories to the
north of South Africa against his future mining profits. The Colonial
Office did not have enough funding for this. Rhodes promoted his
business interests as in the strategic interest of Britain: preventing
the Portuguese, the Germans or the Boers from moving into south-central
Africa. Rhodes's companies and agents cemented these advantages by
obtaining many mining concessions, as exemplified by the Rudd and
Lochner Concessions.
Treaties, concessions and charters
Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a mining concession from
Lobengula, king of the Ndebele of Matabeleland. In 1888 he tried again.
He sent John Moffat, son of the missionary Robert Moffat, who was
trusted by Lobengula, to persuade the latter to sign a treaty of
friendship with Britain, and to look favourably on Rhodes's proposals.
His associate Charles Rudd, together with Francis Thompson and Rochfort
Maguire, assured Lobengula that no more than ten white men would mine in
Matabeleland. This limitation was left out of the document, known as the
Rudd Concession, which Lobengula signed. Furthermore, it stated that the
mining companies could do anything necessary to their operations. When
Lobengula discovered later the true effects of the concession, he tried
to renounce it, but the British Government ignored him.
During the Company's early days, Rhodes and his associates set
themselves up to make millions (hundreds of millions in current pounds)
over the coming years through what has been described as a "suppressio
veri ... which must be regarded as one of Rhodes's least creditable
actions". Contrary to what the British government and the public had
been allowed to think, the Rudd Concession was not vested in the British
South Africa Company, but in a short-lived ancillary concern of Rhodes,
Rudd and a few others called the Central Search Association, which was
quietly formed in London in 1889. This entity renamed itself the United
Concessions Company in 1890, and soon after sold the Rudd Concession to
the Chartered Company for 1,000,000 shares. When Colonial Office
functionaries discovered this chicanery in 1891, they advised Secretary
of State for the Colonies Knutsford to consider revoking the concession,
but no action was taken.
Armed with the Rudd Concession, in 1889 Rhodes obtained a charter from
the British Government for his British South Africa Company (BSAC) to
rule, police, and make new treaties and concessions from the Limpopo
River to the great lakes of Central Africa. He obtained further
concessions and treaties north of the Zambezi, such as those in
Barotseland (the Lochner Concession with King Lewanika in 1890, which
was similar to the Rudd Concession); and in the Lake Mweru area (Alfred
Sharpe's 1890 Kazembe concession). Rhodes also sent Sharpe to get a
concession over mineral-rich Katanga, but met his match in ruthlessness:
when Sharpe was rebuffed by its ruler Msiri, King Leopold II of Belgium
obtained a concession over Msiri's dead body for his Congo Free State.
Rhodes also wanted Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) incorporated
in the BSAC charter. But three Tswana kings, including KhamaIII,
travelled to Britain and won over British public opinion for it to
remain governed by the British Colonial Office in London. Rhodes
commented: "It is humiliating to be utterly beaten by these niggers."
The British Colonial Office also decided to administer British Central
Africa (Nyasaland, today's Malawi) owing tothe activism of Scots
missionaries trying to end the slave trade. Rhodes paid much of the cost
so that the British Central Africa Commissioner Sir Harry Johnston, and
his successor Alfred Sharpe, would assist with security for Rhodes in
the BSAC's north-eastern territories. Johnston shared Rhodes's
expansionist views, but he and his successors were not as pro-settler as
Rhodes, and disagreed on dealings with Africans.
Rhodesia
Rhodes and the Ndebele izinDuna make peace in the Matopos Hills, as
depicted by Robert Baden-Powell, 1896
The BSAC had its own police force, the British South Africa Police,
which was used to control Matabeleland and Mashonaland, in present-day
Zimbabwe. The company had hoped to start a "new Rand" from the ancient
gold mines of the Shona. Because the gold deposits were on a much
smaller scale, many of the white settlers who accompanied the BSAC to
Mashonaland became farmers rather than miners.
When the Ndebele and the Shona—the two main, but rival,
peoples—separately rebelled against the coming of the European settlers,
the BSAC defeated them in the First Matabele War and Second Matabele
War. Shortly after learning of the assassination of the Ndebele
spiritual leader, Mlimo, by the American scout Frederick Russell
Burnham, Rhodes walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo
Hills. He persuaded the Impi to lay down their arms, thus ending the
Second Matabele War.
By the end of 1894, the territories over which the BSAC had concessions
or treaties, collectively called "Zambesia" after the Zambezi River
flowing through the middle, comprised an area of 1,143,000 km between
the Limpopo River and Lake Tanganyika. In May 1895, its name was
officially changed to "Rhodesia", reflecting Rhodes's popularity among
settlers who had been using the name informally since 1891. The
designation Southern Rhodesia was officially adopted in 1898 for the
part south of the Zambezi, which later became Zimbabwe; and the
designations North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia were used from
1895 for the territory which later became Northern Rhodesia, then
Zambia.
Rhodes decreed in his will that he was to be buried in Matobo Hills.
After his death in the Cape in 1902, his body was transported by train
to Bulawayo. His burial was attended by Ndebele chiefs, who asked that
the firing party should not discharge their rifles as this would disturb
the spirits. Then, for the first time, they gave a white man the
Matabele royal salute, Bayete. Rhodes is buried alongside Leander Starr
Jameson and 34 British soldiers killed in the Shangani Patrol. Despite
occasional efforts to return his body to the United Kingdom, his grave
remains there still, "part and parcel of the history of Zimbabwe" and
attracts thousands of visitors each year.
"Cape to Cairo Red Line"
One of Rhodes's dreams (and the dream of many other members of the
British Empire) was for a "red line" on the map from the Cape to Cairo
(on geo-political maps, British dominions were always denoted in red or
pink). Rhodes had been instrumental in securing southern African states
for the Empire. He and others felt the best way to "unify the
possessions, facilitate governance, enable the military to move quickly
to hot spots or conduct war, help settlement, and foster trade" would be
to build the "Cape to Cairo Railway".
This enterprise was not without its problems. France had a rival
strategy in the late 1890s to link its colonies from west to east across
the continent and the Portuguese produced the "Pink Map", representing
their claims to sovereignty in Africa. Ultimately, Belgium and Germany
proved to be the main obstacles to the British dream until the United
Kingdom seized Tanganyika from the Germans as a League of Nations
mandate.
Political views
Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that the
Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. In his last will and
testament, Rhodes said of the English, "I contend that we are the first
race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better
it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our
territory means the birth of more of the English race who otherwise
would not be brought into existence."
Rhodes wanted to make the British Empire a superpower in which all of
the British-dominated countries in the empire, including Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony, would be represented in the
British Parliament. Rhodes included American students as eligible for
the Rhodes scholarships. He said that he wanted to breed an American
elite of philosopher-kings who would have the United States rejoin the
British Empire. As Rhodes also respected and admired the Germans and
their Kaiser, he allowed German students to be included in the Rhodes
scholarships. He believed that eventually the United Kingdom (including
Ireland), the US, and Germany together would dominate the world and
ensure perpetual peace.
Rhodes's views on race have been debated. Critics have labelled him as
an "architect of apartheid" and a "white supremacist", particularly
since 2015. According to Magubane, Rhodes was "unhappy that in many Cape
Constituencies, Africans could be decisive if more of them exercised
this right to vote under current law," with Rhodes arguing that "the
native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must
adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations
with the barbarism of South Africa". Rhodes advocated the governance of
indigenous Africans living in the Cape Colony "in a state of barbarism
and communal tenure" as "a subject race. I do not go so far as the
member for Victoria West, who would not give the black man a vote. ...
If the whites maintain their position as the supreme race, the day may
come when we shall be thankful that we have the natives with us in their
proper position."
However historian Raymond C. Mensing, notes that Rhodes has the
reputation as the most flamboyant exemplar of the British imperial
spirit, and always believed that British institutions were the best.
Mensing argues that Rhodes quietly developed a more nuanced concept of
imperial federation in Africa and that his mature views were more
balanced and realistic. According to Mensing 1986, pp. 99–106, Rhodes
was not a biological or maximal racist and despite his support for what
became the basis for the apartheid system, he is best seen as a cultural
or minimal racist.
On domestic politics within Britain, Rhodes was a supporter of the
Liberal Party. Rhodes's only major impact was his large-scale support of
the Irish nationalist party, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891).
Rhodes worked well with the Afrikaners in the Cape Colony. He supported
teaching Dutch as well as English in public schools. While Prime
Minister of the Cape Colony, he helped to remove most of their legal
disabilities. He was a friend of Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Afrikaner
Bond, and it was largely because of Afrikaner support that he became
Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Rhodes advocated greater
self-government for the Cape Colony, in line with his preference for the
empire to be controlled by local settlers and politicians rather than by
London.
Oxbridge scholar and Zimbabwean author Peter Godwin, whilst critical of
Rhodes, writes that he needs to be viewed via the prisms and cultural
and social perspective of his epoch, positing that Rhodes "was no
19th-century Hitler. He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his
time...Rhodes and the white pioneers in southern Africa did behave
despicably by today's standards, but no worse than the white settlers in
North America, South America, and Australia; and in some senses better,
considering that the genocide of natives in Africa was less complete.
For all the former African colonies are now ruled by indigenous peoples,
unlike the Americas and the Antipodes, most of whose aboriginal natives
were all but exterminated."
Godwin goes on to say "Rhodes and his cronies fit in perfectly with
their surroundings and conformed to the morality (or lack of it) of the
day. As is so often the case, history simply followed the gravitational
pull of superior firepower."
Personal life
Rhodes never married, pleading, "I have too much work on my hands" and
saying that he would not be a dutiful husband.
Princess Radziwiłł
In the last years of his life, Rhodes was stalked by Polish princess
Catherine Radziwiłł, born Rzewuska, who had married into the noble
Polish family Radziwiłł. The princess falsely claimed that she was
engaged to Rhodes, and that they were having an affair. She asked him to
marry her, but Rhodes refused. In reaction, she accused him of loan
fraud. He had to go to trial and testify against her accusation. She
wrote a biography of Rhodes called Cecil Rhodes: Man and Empire Maker.
Her accusations were eventually proven to be false.
Second Boer War
French caricature of Rhodes, showing him trapped in Kimberley during the
Second Boer War, seen emerging from tower clutching papers with
champagne bottle behind his collar.
During the Second Boer War Rhodes went to Kimberley at the onset of the
siege, in a calculated move to raise the political stakes on the
government to dedicate resources to the defence of the city. The
military felt he was more of a liability than an asset and found him
intolerable. The officer commanding the garrison of Kimberley,
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kekewich, experienced serious personal
difficulties with Rhodes because of the latters' inability to
co-operate;
Despite these differences, Rhodes's company was instrumental in the
defence of the city, providing water, refrigeration facilities,
constructing fortifications, manufacturing an armoured train, shells and
a one-off gun named Long Cecil.
Rhodes used his position and influence to lobby the British government
to relieve the siege of Kimberley, claiming in the press that the
situation in the city was desperate. The military wanted to assemble a
large force to take the Boer cities of Bloemfontein and Pretoria, but
they were compelled to change their plans and send three separate
smaller forces to relieve the sieges of Kimberley, Mafeking and
Ladysmith.
Death and legacy
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.
He was sent to Natal aged 16 because it was believed the climate might
help problems with his heart. On returning to England in 1872 his health
again deteriorated with heart and lung problems, to the extent that his
doctor, Sir Morell Mackenzie, believed he would only survive six months.
He returned to Kimberley where his health improved. From age 40 his
heart condition returned with increasing severity until his death from
heart failure in 1902, aged 48, at his seaside cottage in Muizenberg.
The Government arranged an epic journey by train from the Cape to
Rhodesia, with the funeral train stopping at every station to allow
mourners to pay their respects. He was finally laid to rest at World's
View, a hilltop located approximately 35 kilometres (22 mi) south of
Bulawayo, in what was then Rhodesia. Today, his grave site is part of
Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe.
The continued presence of Rhodes's grave in the Matopos hills has not
been without controversy in contemporary Zimbabwe. In December 2010 Cain
Mathema, the governor of Bulawayo, branded the grave outside the
country's second city of Bulawayo an "insult to the African ancestors"
and said he believed its presence had brought bad luck and poor weather
to the region. The grave site is considered an important national and
historic monument on protected land which attracts many tourist visitors
every year.
In February 2012, Mugabe loyalists and ZANU-PF activists visited the
grave site demanding permission from the local chief to exhume Rhodes's
remains and return them to Britain. This was considered a nationalist
political stunt in the run up to an election, rather than representing
any genuine national desire to remove the grave. Local Chief Masuku and
Godfrey Mahachi, one of the country's foremost archaeologists, strongly
expressed their opposition to the grave being removed due to its
historical significance to Zimbabwe. Then-president Robert Mugabe also
opposed the move.
In 2004, he was voted 56th in the SABC 3 television series Great South
Africans.
At his death he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world.
In his first will, written in 1877 before he had accumulated his wealth,
Rhodes wanted to create a secret society that would bring the whole
world under British rule. The exact wording from this will is:
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.
Rhodes's final will 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, another part became the
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, while much was spared from
development and is now an important conservation area.
Rhodes Scholarship
In his last will and testament, he provided for the establishment of the
Rhodes Scholarship, the world's first international study programme. The
scholarship enabled students from territories under British rule or
formerly under British rule and from Germany to study at Rhodes's alma
mater, the University of Oxford. Rhodes' aims were to promote leadership
marked by public spirit and good character, and to "render war
impossible" by promoting friendship between the great powers.
Memorials
Rhodes Memorial stands on Rhodes's favourite spot on the slopes of
Devil's Peak, Cape Town, with a view looking north and east towards the
Cape to Cairo route. From 1910 to 1984 Rhodes's house in Cape Town,
Groote Schuur, was the official Cape residence of the Prime Ministers of
South Africa and continued as a presidential residence of P. W. Botha
and F. W. De Klerk.
His birthplace was established in 1938 as the Rhodes Memorial Museum,
now known as Bishops Stortford Museum. The cottage in Muizenberg where
he died is a provincial heritage site in the Western Cape Province of
South Africa. The cottage today is operated as a museum by the
Muizenberg Historical Conservation Society, and is open to the public. A
broad display of Rhodes material can be seen, including the original De
Beers board room table around which diamonds worth billions of dollars
were traded.
Rhodes University College, now Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, was
established in his name by his trustees and founded by Act of Parliament
on 31 May 1904.
The residents of Kimberley elected to build a memorial in Rhodes's
honour in their city, which was unveiled in 1907. The 72-ton bronze
statue depicts Rhodes on his horse, looking north with map in hand, and
dressed as he was when met the Ndebele after their rebellion.