The son of avicar, Rhodes was born inNetteswell House,Bishop's Stortford,Hertfordshire. Due to his ill-health, at age sixteen he was sent to South Africa by his family in the hopes the climate might improve his health. At eighteen, he entered the diamond trade atKimberley in 1871 and with funding fromRothschild & Co, began to systematically buy out and consolidate diamond mines. Over the next two decades, he gained a near-complete monopoly of the world diamond market. In 1888, he founded the diamond companyDe Beers, which retains its prominence into the 21st century.
Rhodes entered theCape Parliament at the age of 27 in 1881,[3] and in 1890, he became prime minister. As prime minister, he expropriated land fromblack Africans with theGlen Grey Act, while also tripling the wealth requirement for voting under theFranchise and Ballot Act, effectively barring black people from taking part in elections.[4][5] After overseeing the formation of Rhodesia during the early 1890s, he was forced to resign in 1896 after the disastrousJameson Raid, an unauthorised attack onPaul Kruger'sSouth African Republic (or Transvaal). His career never recovered, and after years of ill health and cardiovascular issues, he died in 1902. At his request he was buried atMalindidzimu in what is now Zimbabwe. In his last will, he provided for the establishment of the internationalRhodes Scholarship atUniversity of Oxford, the oldest graduate scholarship in the world.
With the rise of international anti-racist movements likeRhodes Must Fall, Rhodes's legacy is a matter of debate.[6] Critics cite his confiscation of land from the black indigenous population of theCape Colony, and his promotion of false claims that southern African archeological sites such asGreat Zimbabwe were built by European civilisations.[7][8][9]
Rhodes was born in 1853 inBishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, the fourth son and sixth child ofthe Reverend Francis William Rhodes (1807–1878) and his wife, Louisa Peacock.[10][11]
Rhodes's birthplace, now part ofBishop's Stortford Museum; the bedroom in which he was born is marked by a plaque.
Francis was aChurch of Englandclergyman who served asperpetual curate ofBrentwood, Essex (1834–1843), and then as vicar of nearby Bishop's Stortford (1849–1876), where he was known for having never preached asermon longer than ten minutes.[12] Francis was the eldest son of William Rhodes (1774–1855), a brick manufacturer fromHackney, Middlesex. The family owned significant estates in London'sHackney andDalston which Cecil would later inherit.[13] The earliest traceable direct ancestor of Cecil Rhodes is James Rhodes (fl. 1660) of Snape Green,Whitmore, Staffordshire.[14] Francis first wed Elizabeth Sophia Manet ofHampstead in 1833, but she died in 1835, giving birth to their daughter Elizabeth.[15]
Louisa Peacock was one of two daughters of Anthony Taylor Peacock, aLincolnshire banker, and came from a prominent family.[11] At twenty-eight, she married Rhodes as his second wife on October 22, 1844.[11] Her grandfather, Anthony Peacock, was a large landowner who helped found theSleaford andNewark bank in 1792.[11] He also sponsored the construction of the Sleaford canal and was one of three commissioners who administered the LincolnshireEnclosure Acts in the 1790s.[11]
Rhodes as a boy
Louisa was described was a warm, cheerful woman and had an especially close relationship with Cecil out of her sons, who was described as a serious and somber child.[16] In contrast, he had a more distant relationship with his father, owing to the latter's career and advanced age; when he was present, Rhodes described him as coolly pragmatic, interrogating his son's dreams and fancies and encouraging him to rebuild them on "more practical lines."[17] He had three sisters and eight brothers, though two of them died in infancy.[18] His siblings includedFrank Rhodes, aBritish Army officer.
From a young age, he had a close relationship with Sophia, his mother's unmarried sister and his godmother, and spent many vacations at her manor in Sleaford or in theChannel Islands.[19] With her help, his father sent his elder sons to prestigious public schools.[19] However, at the age of nine, Cecil was sent instead to Bishop's Stortford Grammar School for unclear reasons, some speculating it was due to poor health or financial troubles.[19] He was noted by his teachers to be an active but unremarkable pupil.[19]
At the age of sixteen, Rhodes was removed from school by his father, who intended on tutoring him personally in preparation for university.[20] However, not long after, he fell ill.[20] There were worries that he might've contractedtuberculosis, something that had already befell other members of the family; as treatment, the family doctor recommended a long sea voyage, and his father sent him to Natal, South Africa, where his brother Herbert had received a grant for 200 acres to farm cotton.[20]
Arriving inDurban on September 1, 1870, Rhodes lived on money lent to him by Sophia, who had also helped pay for his passage.[21][20] His brother Herbert informed him via letter that he had left for the diamond fields in the country's interior.[22] Awaiting his brother's return, Rhodes would briefly stay with theSurveyor-General of Natal,Peter Cormac Sutherland, inPietermaritzburg.[22] From there, he went out to inspect his brother's cotton farm in theUmkomazi valley and found it to be in a state of disrepair, contrary to Herbert's reports to their aunt.[22] By mid-October, Herbert had returned; in recognition of Rhodes' help by bringing new seeds, clearing acres of dense bush, and planting the new crop, he agreed to share the land and profits.[23] Rhodes was often left to run the farm himself, as Herbert would leave for horse-racing and cricket matches in Pietermaritzburg and Richmond.[23] In March 1871, Herbert abandoned the farm once again in favor of the diamond fields, taking the best oxen with him. Without them, the cotton harvest was underwhelming and Rhodes was forced to sell his harvest at well-below expected price.[24]
In May 1871, diamonds were found at the Vooruitzigt farm, which was owned by Johannese Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus.[24] Diamond miners quickly swarmed the site, and by October 1871, an eighteen year old Rhodes would abandon the farm and join his brother at the diamond fields ofKimberley.[24] Here he would supervise the working of his brother's claims and speculated on his behalf, as Herbert had departed for England two weeks after Rhodes' arrival.[25] In January 1872, he had returned to the mining camps with their brother Frank.[25] It was during this time that he metJohn X. Merriman andCharles Rudd, who would later became his partner in theDe Beers Mining Company and the Niger Oil Company.[25]
In July of that year, Rhodes suffered his first heart attack, and could not help dig for almost eight months.[26] When he'd recovered enough to travel, his brothers took him on a long northbound journey by ox-wagon, both to aid Rhodes' health, and to pursue news of gold discovered in the general area.[26] On this journey, Rhodes would also purchase a 3000-acre farm in theTransvaal, which qualified him for voting rights in the Boer republic.[26] By the time they reached their destination atMarabastad, the gold was already washed out, but there were rumors of more gold discovered in the eastern Transvaal.[26] Herbert accordingly sold his diamond claims to Cecil and left to mine gold; the two never saw each other again.[26]
A portrait bust of Rhodes on the first floor of No. 6King Edward Street marks the place of his residence whilst inOxford.
In July 1873, Rhodes and his brother Frank left South Africa and sailed for England.[27] There, Rhodes was admitted toOriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term.[27] On November 1, 1873, his mother died and he left to attend the funeral.[27] Soon after his return to Oxford, he caught a severe chill while rowing and the doctors recommended he immediately return to the hot dry climate of Kimberley.[27] By January 1874, he was back in South Africa[27] and would not return to Oxford until 1876.
Among Rhodes' Oxford associates wereJames Rochfort Maguire, later a fellow ofAll Souls College and a director of theBritish South Africa Company, andCharles Metcalfe.[28] Due to his university career, Rhodes admired the Oxford tutorial system and was eventually inspired to develop his scholarship scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye—except in science—an Oxford man is at the top of the tree".[29]
Rhodes is said to have been greatly affected byJohn Ruskin's inaugural lecture at Oxford, which expounded upon the responsibility of the British to rule as a guiding light of civilization, and went so far as to own a longhand copy of the speech.[30] While attending Oriel College, Rhodes became a Freemason in June 1877 and was initiated into theApollo University Lodge.[31] Though he found their rituals to be frivolous, he continued to be aSouth African Freemason until his death in 1902.[31] Rhodes would later write of creating a new secret society that worked to advance British interests and rules.
During his years at Oxford, Rhodes continued to prosper inKimberley. Before his departure for Oxford, he and C. D. Rudd had moved from theKimberley Mine to invest in the more costly claims of what was known as old De Beers (Vooruitzicht). After purchasing the land in 1839 from David Danser, aKoranna chief in the area, David Stephanus Fourie, the predecessor to Claudine Fourie-Grosvenor, had allowed the de Beers and various other Afrikaner families to cultivate the land. This region extended from theModder River via the Vet River up to theVaal River.[32][page needed]
In 1874 and 1875, the diamond fields fell into depression, but Rhodes and Rudd were among those who stayed to consolidate their interests. They believed numerous diamonds could be found in the hard blue ground that had been exposed after the softer, yellow layer near the surface had been worked away. At the same time, the question on how to remove all the water flooding the mines became more pressing; Rhodes and Rudd were able to obtain a contract to pump water out of the three main mines. Upon Rhodes' return from his first term at Oxford, he lived with Robert Dundas Graham, who later became a mining partner with Rudd and Rhodes.[33]
On 13 March 1888, Rhodes and Rudd launchedDe Beers Consolidated Mines after the amalgamation of several individual claims and with the funding ofN.M. Rothschild & Sons.[a] With £200,000 of capital, or $28.5 million today, the company owned the largest interest in the mine.[35] Rhodes was named secretary and chairman ofDe Beers at the company's founding in 1888. Financed byN M Rothschild & Sons, Rhodes and his brother spent the next seventeen years buying up all the smaller diamond mining operations in the Kimberley area, and in 1890, their monopoly over the world's diamond supply would be sealed through a strategic partnership with the London-based Diamond Syndicate; all parties agreed to maintain high prices.[36][page needed][37]
During the 1880s,Cape vineyards were devastated by aphylloxera epidemic and the diseased vineyards had to be dug up and replanted, leading farmers to seek alternatives to wine. In 1892, Rhodes financedThe Pioneer Fruit Growing Company atNooitgedacht, a venture created by Harry Pickstone, an Englishman with growing fruit in California.[38][page needed]
Meanwhile, the shipping magnatePercy Molteno had just undertaken the first successful refrigerated export to Europe. In 1896, after consulting with Molteno, Rhodes began to pay more attention to export fruit farming and bought farms in Groot Drakenstein,Wellington and Stellenbosch. A year later, he bought Rhone andBoschendal and commissionedSir Herbert Baker to build him a cottage there.[38][page needed][39][page needed] The successful operation soon expanded intoRhodes Fruit Farms, and formed a cornerstone of the modern-day Cape fruit industry.
This Politics in South Africa sectionis missing information about information between Rhodes' joining politics in 1880 and becoming prime minister in 1890. Please expand the Politics in South Africa section to include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(September 2025)
In 1880, Rhodes decided to enter public life at the Cape. With the earlier incorporation ofGriqualand West into theCape Colony under theMolteno Ministry in 1877, the area had obtained six seats in theCape House of Assembly. Rhodes chose the rural and predominatelyBoer constituency ofBarkly West, which would remain loyal to Rhodes until his death.[40]
When Rhodes became a member of theCape Parliament, the chief goal of the assembly was to help decide the future ofBasutoland.[10] The ministry of SirGordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after theGun War, an 1880 rebellion. The Sprigg ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its policy of disarming all native Africans to theBasotho nation, who resisted.
In 1890, Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. He introduced various Acts of Parliament 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.[41] "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."[41]
In 1892, Rhodes'sFranchise and Ballot Act raised the property requirements from a relatively low £25 to a significantly higher £75 which had a disproportionate effect on the previously growing number of enfranchised black people in the Cape under theCape Qualified Franchise that had been in force since 1853.[42] By limiting the amount of land which black Africans were legally allowed to hold in theGlen Grey Act of 1894, Rhodes further disenfranchised the black population. To quoteRichard 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".[43] In addition, Rhodes was an early architect of theNatives Land Act, 1913, which would limit the areas of the country where black Africans were allowed to settle to less than 10%.[44] 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 inIndia, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa."[45]
Rhodes also introduced educational reform to the area. His policies were instrumental in the development ofBritish imperial policies in South Africa, such as theHut tax.
Groote Schuur in 1899, Rhodes's home in Cape Town at the time
Rhodes did not, however, have direct political power over the independent Boer Republic of theTransvaal.[citation needed][46] 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,[10] Rhodes supported theJameson Raid, an unsuccessful attempt to create an uprising in the Transvaal that had the tacit approval ofSecretary of State for the ColoniesJoseph Chamberlain.[47] 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 ofhigh treason and nearly sentenced to death, and contributed to the outbreak of theSecond Boer War.
In 1899, Rhodes was sued by a man named Burrows for falsely representing the purpose of the raid and thereby convincing him to participate in the raid. Burrows was severely wounded and had to have his leg amputated. His suit for £3,000 in damages was successful.[48]
Rhodes used his wealth and that of his business partnerAlfred Beit and other investors to pursue his dream of creating aBritish Empire in new territories to the north by obtainingmineral concessions from the most powerfulindigenouschiefs. Rhodes's 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 BritishCommissioners, and through them organized Britishprotectorates 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.[49][50]
The imperial factor was a double-edged sword: Rhodes did not want thebureaucrats of theColonial 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 Britishmissionaries, 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 thePortuguese, theGermans or theBoers 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.[49]
Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a mining concession fromLobengula, King of theNdebele ofMatabeleland. In 1888 he tried again. He sentJohn Smith Moffat, son of the missionaryRobert 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 theRudd 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.[49]
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".[51] Contrary to what the British government and the public had been allowed to think, the Rudd Concession was not vested in theBritish South Africa Company, but in a short-lived ancillary concern of Rhodes, Rudd and a few others called theCentral Search Association, which was quietly formed in London in 1889. This entity renamed itself theUnited 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 advisedSecretary of State for the ColoniesViscount Knutsford to consider revoking the concession, but no action was taken.[51]
Armed with the Rudd Concession, in 1889 Rhodes obtained acharter from the British Government for his British South Africa Company (BSAC) to rule, police, and make new treaties and concessions from theLimpopo River to the great lakes of Central Africa. He obtained further concessions and treaties north of theZambezi, such as those inBarotseland (the Lochner Concession with KingLewanika in 1890, which was similar to the Rudd Concession); and in theLake Mweru area (Alfred Sharpe's 1890Kazembe concession). Rhodes also sent Sharpe to get a concession over mineral-richKatanga, but met his match in ruthlessness: when Sharpe was rebuffed by its rulerMsiri, KingLeopold II of Belgium obtained a concession over Msiri's dead body for hisCongo Free State.[50]
Rhodes also wantedBechuanaland Protectorate incorporated in the BSAC charter. But threeTswana kings, includingKhama III, 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."[49]
The British Colonial Office also decided to administerBritish Central Africa owing to[clarification needed] the activism ofDavid Livingstone trying to end theEast African Arab-Swahili slave trade. Rhodes paid much of the cost so that the British Central Africa Commissioner SirHarry Johnston, and his successorAlfred 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.
The BSAC had its own police force, theBritish South Africa Police, which was used to controlMatabeleland andMashonaland, in present-dayZimbabwe.[52] The company had hoped to start a "newRand" from the ancient gold mines of theShona. Because gold deposits weren't as plentiful as they had hoped, many of the white settlers who accompanied the BSAC to Mashonaland became farmers rather than miners. White settlers and their locally-employed Native Police engaged in widespread indiscriminate rape of Ndebele women in the early 1890s.[53]
TheNdebele and theShona—the two main, but rival, peoples—took advantage of the absence of most of the BSAP for the Jameson Raid in January 1896; they separately rebelled against the coming of the European settlers, and the BSAC defeated them in theSecond Matabele War. Rhodes went to Matabeleland after his resignation as Cape Colony Premier, and appointed himself Colonel in his own column of irregular troops moving fromSalisbury toBulawayo to relieve the siege of whites there. He remained Managing Director of the BSAC (with power of attorney to take decisions without reference back to the Board in London) until June 1896, defying Chamberlain's calls to resign, and he gave instructions that no mercy be shown in putting down the rebellion, telling officers that "Your instructions are" he told a major, to "do the most harm you can to the natives around you."[54] He ordered a police officer to "kill all you can", even those Ndebele who begged for mercy and threw down their arms.[55] Shortly after learning of the assassination of the Ndebele spiritual leader, Mlimo, by the American scoutFrederick Russell Burnham, and after participating in the cavalry charge at one of the last pitched battles of this phase of the war, Rhodes's associate Johan Colenbrander arranged for a meeting with the remaining Ndebele chiefs. Rhodes and a few colleagues walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold inMatobo Hills.[56] In a series of meetings between August and October, he persuaded theImpi to lay down their arms, thus ending the Second Matabele War.[57]
In the aftermath of the war in Matabeleland, but whilst the uprising in Mashonaland was being suppressed, Rhodes returned to London to give evidence to the UK House of Commons Select Committee of Enquiry into the Jameson Raid. As Rhodes had incriminating telegrams demonstrating the complicity and foreknowledge of the Raid by Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, he and his solicitor were able to blackmail Chamberlain into retaining the BSAC Charter, leaving theCompany in charge of administering the territory north of the Limpopo even as it became aCrown colony.[58] Rhodes returned to Mashonaland, further overseeing the suppression of the uprising there into 1897. The scandal attached to his name did not prevent him rejoining the board of the BSAC in 1898. He remained an MP in the Cape Parliament and a Privy Councillor.
By the end of 1894, the territories over which the BSAC had concessions or treaties, collectively called "Zambesia" after theZambezi River flowing through the middle, comprised an area of 1,143,000 km2 between theLimpopo River andLake 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 designationSouthern Rhodesia was officially adopted in 1898 for the part south of the Zambezi, which later became Zimbabwe; and the designationsNorth-Western andNorth-Eastern Rhodesia were used from 1895 for the territory which later becameNorthern Rhodesia, thenZambia.[59][60] He built ahouse for himself in 1897 in Bulawayo.
Rhodes decreed in his will that he was to be buried in Matopos Hills (now Matobo Hills). After his death in the Cape in 1902, his body was transported by train toBulawayo. His burial was attended by Ndebele chiefs, now paid agents of the BSAC administration, 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 alongsideLeander Starr Jameson and 34 British soldiers killed in theShangani Patrol.[61] 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.[62]
One of Rhodes's dreams 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".[63]
This enterprise was not without its problems.France had a conflicting strategy in the late 1890s to link its colonies from west to east across the continent[64] and the Portuguese produced the "Pink Map",[65] representing their claims to sovereignty in Africa. Ultimately,Belgium andGermany proved to be the main obstacles to the British objective until the United Kingdom conquered and seizedTanganyika from the Germans as aLeague of Nations mandate inWorld War I.[66]
French caricature of Rhodes, showing him trapped inKimberley during theSecond Boer War, here peering from a tower clutching papers, with a champagne bottle behind his collar
During theSecond Boer War Rhodes went toKimberley at the onset of thesiege, 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 ColonelRobert Kekewich, experienced serious personal difficulties with Rhodes because of the latter's inability to co-operate.[67][68]
Despite these differences, Rhodes's company was instrumental in the defence of the city, providing water and refrigeration facilities, constructing fortifications, and manufacturing anarmoured train, shells and a one-off gun namedLong Cecil.[69]
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 ofBloemfontein andPretoria, but they were compelled to change their plans and send three separate smaller forces to relieve the sieges of Kimberley,Mafeking andLadysmith.[70]
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, SirMorell Mackenzie, believed he would survive only 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 inMuizenberg.[2]
The government arranged an epic journey by train from the Cape to Rhodesia, with thefuneral train stopping at every station to allow mourners to pay their respects. It was reported that at Kimberley, "practically the entire population marched in procession past the funeral car".[71] He was finally laid to rest at his request atMalindidzimu, a hilltop located approximately 35 kilometres (22 mi) south ofBulawayo, in what was thenRhodesia.[72] The site was of supreme importance toShona traditional religion as the shrine ofMwari, with this action interpreted as a gesture of colonial triumph and conquest over indigenous Africans.[73] Today, his gravesite is part ofMatobo National Park,Zimbabwe.
Rhodes never married, pleading, "I have too much work on my hands" and saying that he would not be a dutiful husband.[74][page needed] According to his personal banker, Lewis Mitchell, Rhodes "took, on occasions, a singularly human interest in the welfare of young men, and read their characters with discernment... Once, when twitted [teased] with his preference for young men, he retorted, 'Of course, of course, they must soon take up our work; we must teach them what to do and what to avoid.'" According to his secretary, Philip Jourdan, he "seemed to have a liking for young men" and was "particularly partial to people with blue eyes."[75][76] Graham Bower, the deputy toSir Hercules Robinson, described the relationship between Rhodes and his private secretary Neville Pickering as "an absolutely lover-like friendship."[77]
Rhodes's biographers have been divided on the question of his sexuality. John Gilbert Lockhart andC. M. Woodhouse denied that Rhodes was homosexual, whileStuart Cloete andAntony Thomas took the view that he wasasexual.Robert I. Rotberg andBrian Roberts have asserted that he was homosexual.[76] According to Rotberg, that Rhodes was homosexual is "indisputable on the basis of the available evidence."[78]The BBC's biographical drama seriesRhodes (1996), written byAntony Thomas, treated him as gay. Robin Brown has claimed inThe Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes's Plan for a New World Order that Rhodes washomosexual who was in love with Neville Pickering, and that he established "... a homosexual hegemony—which was already operative in the Secret Society—[and] went on to influence, if not control, British politics at the beginning of the twentieth century".[79] Paul Maylam ofRhodes University criticised Brown's book in a review forThe Conversation as "based heavily on surmise and assertion" and lacking "referenced source material to substantiate its claims", as well as being riddled with basic factual errors.[80]
In the last years of his life, Rhodes wasstalked by Polish princessCatherine Radziwiłł, bornRzewuska, who had married into thenoble Polish familyRadziwiłł. 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. Subsequently, she accused him of loan fraud and he had to go to trial and testify against her accusations, which were proven false.[81] She later wrote abiography of Rhodes calledCecil Rhodes: Man and Empire Maker.[82]
Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that theAnglo-Saxonrace was destined to greatness.[10] In what he described as "a draft of some of my ideas" written in 1877 while a student at Oxford, 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."[83] Rhodes bemoaned that there was little land left to conquer and said "to think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far".[84]
Furthermore Rhodes saw imperialism as a way to alleviate domestic social problems - "In order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of theUnited Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists".[85]
Rhodes wanted to develop a Commonwealth in which all of the British-dominated countries in the empire would berepresented in the British Parliament.[86] Rhodes explicitly stipulated in his will that all races should be eligible for the scholarships.[87] (However, while "many nonwhite students have benefited from the scholarships, []it is doubtful that such was Rhodes’s intention. He once defined his policy as "equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi'"and later, under liberal pressure, amended “white” to “civilized.” But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming “civilized” as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing.".[88])
It is said that he wanted to develop an American elite ofphilosopher-kings who would have the United States rejoin the British Empire. As Rhodes also respected and admired the Germans and theirKaiser, 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.[89][page needed]
Rhodes's views on race have been debated; he supported the rights of indigenous Africans to vote,[90] but critics have labelled him as an "architect ofapartheid"[91] and a "white supremacist", particularly since 2015.[44][92][93] 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 [referring to the Cape Qualified Franchise]," 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".[45] 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."[90]
He once stated "I prefer land to niggers" and referred to the 'Anglo-Saxon race' as "the best, most human, most honourable race the world possesses".[94] He thought that those lands which were occupied by the "most despicable specimens of human beings" should be inhabited by Anglo-Saxons.[95]
However others have disputed these views. For example, 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, "Rhodes was not abiological or maximal racist. Despite his support for what became the basis for the apartheid system, he is best seen as acultural or minimal racist".[96] In a 2016 opinion piece forThe Times,Oxford University professorNigel Biggar argued that although Rhodes was a committedimperialist, the charges of racism against him are unfounded.[97] In a 2021 article, Biggar further argued that:[98]
If Rhodes was a racist, he would not have enjoyed cordial relations with individual Africans, he would not have regarded them as capable of civilisation, and he would not have supported their right to vote at all. Nor would he have stipulated in his final will of July 1899 that the scholarships that would famously bear his name should be awarded without regard for "race". And yet he did all these things.
On domestic politics within Britain, Rhodes was a supporter of theLiberal Party.[1] Rhodes's only major impact was his large-scale support of the Irish nationalist party, led byCharles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891).[99]
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.[89] He was a friend ofJan Hofmeyr, leader of theAfrikaner Bond, and it was largely because of Afrikaner support that he became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.[100] 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.
Scholar and Zimbabwean authorPeter 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."
Silver coin: 1 crownSouthern Rhodesia; Bust of Cecil John Rhodes, the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, colonial magnate, and namesake of Southern Rhodesia, in a circle in the center and three shields for each colony developed by Rhodes, representing (from left to right) Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland below, all flanked by two wreaths wrapped in banners
Rhodes has been the target of much recent criticism, with some historians attacking him as a ruthless imperialist andwhite supremacist.[101] The continued presence of his grave in the Matopos (now Matobo) hills has not been without controversy in contemporary Zimbabwe. In December 2010,Cain Mathema, the governor ofBulawayo, branded the grave outside the country's second city an "insult to the African ancestors" and said he believed its presence had brought bad luck and poor weather to the region.[102]
In February 2012, Mugabe loyalists andZANU-PF activists visited the grave site demanding permission from the local chief to exhume Rhodes's remains and return them to Britain. Many considered this a nationalist political stunt in the run up to an election, and 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-presidentRobert Mugabe also opposed the move.[62]In 2004, Rhodes was voted 56th in theSABC 3 television seriesGreat South Africans.[103] A preparatory school in the Midlands town of Gweru in Zimbabwe is named after him. In the early 2000s during the height of the land reform and racial tensions, ZANU-PF politicians called for a change in all the country's school names with colonial ties, however, efforts were mostly fruitless as most people felt that it was unnecessary and names of places they live in reflect the diverse identity and cultural heritage of the country but called for the government to embrace the history of the country and allow room for new names for new places in the ever-growing towns and cities.
In his second will, written in 1877 before he had accumulated his wealth, Rhodes wanted to create asecret society that would bring the whole world under British rule. His biographer calls it an "extensive fantasy."[104] Rhodes envisioned a secret society to extend British rule worldwide, including China, Japan, all of Africa and South America, and indeed the United States as well:
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, theHoly Land, the Valley of theEuphrates, the Islands of Cyprus andCandia, the whole of South America, theIslands 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.[105]
— Cecil Rhodes
Rhodes's final will—when he actually did have money—was much more realistic and focused on scholarships. He also left a large area of land on the slopes ofTable Mountain to the South African nation. Part of this estate became the upper campus of theUniversity of Cape Town, another part became theKirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, while much was spared from development and is now an important conservation area.[106]
In his last will, Rhodes provided for the establishment of theRhodes Scholarship. Over the course of the previous half-century, governments, universities and individuals in the settler colonies had been establishing travelling scholarships for this purpose. The Rhodes awards fit the established pattern.[107] The scholarship enabled male students fromterritories under British rule or formerly under British rule and from Germany to study at Rhodes's alma mater, the University of Oxford. Rhodes's aims were to promote leadership marked by public spirit and good character, and to "render war impossible" by promoting friendship between the great powers.[108][109]
Rhodes Memorial stands on Rhodes's favourite spot on the slopes ofDevil's Peak, Cape Town, with a view looking north and east towards theCape 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.
His birthplace was established in 1938 as the Rhodes Memorial Museum, now known asBishops Stortford Museum. The cottage in Muizenberg where he died is a provincial heritage site in theWestern 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.[110]
Rhodes University College, nowRhodes University, inGrahamstown, was established in his name by his trustees and founded by Act of Parliament on 31 May 1904.
The residents ofKimberley, Northern Cape 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 he met the Ndebele after theirrebellion.[111]
The founder of the original country of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Cecil John Rhodes first visitedNyanga in the Eastern Highlands of the country in 1897. Captivated by the unspoilt and breathtaking beauty of the area, he immediately purchased a parcel of farms totalling 40,000 ha and then proceeded to import cattle fromMozambique and develop extensive plantations of apple and fruit trees. When he died in 1902, Rhodes bequeathed most of the estate to the nation, and this now forms theNyanga National Park. Rhodes's original farmhouse has been meticulously preserved and is now the Rhodes Nyanga Hotel.
Memorials to Rhodes have been opposed since at least the 1950s, when someAfrikaner students demanded the removal of a Rhodes statue at theUniversity of Cape Town.[112] A 2015 movement, known as "Rhodes Must Fall" (or #RhodesMustFall on social media), began with student protests at the University of Cape Town that were successful in getting university authorities to remove the Rhodes statue from the campus.[113] The protest also had the broader goal of highlighting what the activists considered the lack of systemic post-apartheid racial transformation in South African institutions.[114]
Following a series of protests andvandalism at the University of Cape Town, various movements both in South Africa and other countries have been launched in opposition to Cecil Rhodes memorials. These include a campaign to change the name ofRhodes University[115] and to remove a statue of Rhodes fromOriel College, Oxford.[116] The campaign was covered in a documentary byChannel 4, which was calledThe Battle for Britain's Heroes.[117] The documentary was commissioned afterAfua Hirsch wrote an article on the topic. Moreover, an article byAmit Chaudhuri, inThe Guardian, suggested the criticism was "unsurprising and overdue".[118] Other academics including Kehinde Andrews, prominent British academic and author specialising in Black studies, have vocally spoken in favour of #RhodesMustFall.[54] However, Oriel College opted to keep the Rhodes statue, despite the protests.[119] Oriel College claimed in 2016 they would lose about £100 million worth of gifts if they removed the statue.[120] Nevertheless, in June 2020, the college voted in favour of setting up an independent commission of inquiry, amid widespread support for removing the statue.[121]A statue of Rhodes was erected in the city ofBulawayo in 1904 in the city centre. In 1981 after the country's independence the statue was removed to the centenary park at theNatural History Museum of Zimbabwe.
Encyclopædia Britannica, discussing his legacy, wrote of Rhodes that he "once defined his policy as 'equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi' and later, under liberal pressure, amended 'white' to 'civilized'. But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming 'civilized' as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing."[122]
As part of his legacy, on his death Rhodes left a significant amount of money to be used to finance talented young scholars ("race" was not a criterion) at Oxford. Currently, in Oxford a number of those South African and Zimbabwean recipients of funds from his legacy are campaigning for his statue to be removed from display in Oxford. When asked if there was any double standard or hypocrisy in being funded by the Rhodes Scholarship fund and benefiting from the opportunity, whilst at the same time campaigning against the legacy of Rhodes, one of the South African campaigners,Ntokozo Qwabe, replied that "this scholarship does not buy our silence...There is no hypocrisy in being a recipient of a Rhodes scholarship and being publicly critical of Cecil Rhodes and his legacy ... There is no clause that binds us to find 'the good' in Rhodes' character, nor to sanitise the imperialist, colonial agenda he propagated".[123]
In June 2020, amid the wider context ofBlack Lives Matter protests, the governing body of Oxford's Oriel College voted to remove the statue of Rhodes located on the college's façade facingOxford's High Street.[124] The actual removal was not to take place until at least early spring 2021, when a commission set up by the college delivered its report on the future of the statue.[125] In May 2021, the commission reported that, while the majority of members supported the statue's removal, the costs to do so were prohibitively high, and the college would therefore not be taking action.[126]
Mark Twain's sarcastic summation of Rhodes ("I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake"), from Chapter LXIX ofFollowing the Equator, still often appears in collections of famous insults.[127][b]
He is depicted, along with other Cape notables, in the 1899 artworkHoliday Time in Cape Town by James Ford.
The will of Cecil Rhodes is the central theme in the science fiction bookGreat Work of Time byJohn Crowley, an alternative 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 traveller from the future British Empire.
Rhodes was played byFerdinand Marian in the Nazi filmOhm Krüger (1941), where he—like all other British characters in the film—was presented as an outright villain.
In 1901, Rhodes boughtDalham Hall, Suffolk. In 1902, ColonelFrank Rhodes erected the village hall in the village ofDalham, nearBury St Edmunds, to commemorate the life of his brother, who had died before taking possession of the estate.
Cecil Rhodes was the subject of a South African television mini-series,Barney Barnato, made in 1989 and first aired onSABC in early 1990.
In 1996, BBC-TV made an eight-part television drama about Rhodes calledRhodes: The Life and Legend of Cecil Rhodes.[131] It was produced by David Drury and written by Antony Thomas. It tells the story of Rhodes's life through a series of flashbacks of conversations between him and Princess Catherine Radziwiłł and also between her and people who knew him. It also shows the story of how she stalked and eventually ruined him. In the serial, Cecil Rhodes is played byMartin Shaw, the younger Cecil Rhodes is played by his son Joe Shaw, and Princess Radziwiłł is played byFrances Barber. In the serial Rhodes is portrayed as ruthless and greedy. The serial also suggests that he was homosexual.[132] Countering the implication of Rhodes's homosexuality, historian and journalistPaul Johnson wrote that Rhodes had been falsely smeared by the programme, commenting: "In nine tendentious hours, Rhodes is to be presented as a corrupt and greedy money-grabber, a racist and paedophile, whose disgusting passion was to get his hands on young boys ... the BBC has spent £10m of our money putting together a farrago of exaggerations and smears about this great man."Peter Godwin said of the film that "it feels like a work overwhelmingly informed by malice, consistently seizing on the very worst interpretation of the man without really attempting to get under his skin. Rhodes was no 19th-century Hitler. He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his time."
Rhodes features prominently inWilbur Smith'sBallantyne series of novels, fictional stories set amongst real events in Rhodes's lifetime.
^ With the provision of funding for the creation of De Beers in 1887, Rothschild also turned to investment in the mining of precious stones, in Africa and India. Today it markets 40% of the world's rough diamonds, and at one time marketed 90%.[34]
^His account of how "Cecil Rhodes" made his first fortune by discovering, in Australia, in the belly of a shark, a newspaper that gave him advance knowledge of a great rise in wool prices, is completely fictional—Twain dates the event at 1870, when Rhodes was in South Africa.
^["Most of his fortune was devoted to the scholarships. As the will forbade disqualification on grounds of race, many nonwhite students have benefited from the scholarships, though it is doubtful that such was Rhodes’s intention. He once defined his policy as “equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi” and later, under liberal pressure, amended “white” to “civilized.” But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming “civilized” as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing."https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecil-Rhodes#:~:text=Most%20of%20his%20fortune%20was,came%20to%20the%20same%20thing. "Cecil Rhodes"].{{cite web}}:Check|url= value (help)
McDonald, J.G. (1917).Rhodes – A Life. London: Chatto & Windus. p. 403.
Magubane, Bernard M. (1996).The Making of a Racist State: British Imperialism and the Union of South Africa, 1875–1910. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.ISBN978-0865432413.
Marlowe, John (1972).Cecil Rhodes: The Anatomy of Empire. Elek.ISBN978-0-236-15449-4.
Parry, Richard (1983). ""In a Sense Citizens, but Not Altogether Citizens...": Rhodes, Race, and the Ideology of Segregation at the Cape in the Late Nineteenth Century".Canadian Journal of African Studies.17 (3).
Galbraith, John S. (2008). "Cecil Rhodes and his 'cosmic dreams': A reassessment".The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.1 (2):173–89.doi:10.1080/03086537308582371.ISSN0308-6534.
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