Rhodes - extracts from websites

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Taken from "This is our land" by Frank Clements

Cecil John Rhodes

Rhodes (1853-1902)

The Rhodes Scholars pilgrimage in 1953
Rhodes's Grave 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Rhodes Scholarships

RHODES MADE HIS first will in 1877, when he was twenty-four years old, and already a wealthy man, although by no means as rich as he was to become later. He made three other wills before he died, and they were all to reflect the theme of the first document, which, incidentally, he never destroyed.
The project which obsessed Rhodes was the spread of Anglo-Saxon influence. His ideas were very crudely expressed in his first will, when he left his money for the establishment of British rule throughout the world.

Even so, he had no desire to control his money from the grave. Once, when asked by the friends who were to be his trustees, just how exactly they should meet his wishes as expressed in his will, he said laconically: "You know what my ideas are, see that you carry them out. If you don't, I'll come back and worry you."

However as he grew older, wiser and richer, his wills became more precise; and the last one gave a detailed allocation of his estate. The early theme as expressed in 1877 became much more practical in the last document, written in 1891.

In this will, he set out his ideas for "colonial scholarships" as he was to refer to them, saying, ". . . now, therefore, I direct my trustees as soon as may be after my death ... as they shall find convenient . . . to establish for male students scholarships . . . each of which shall be of the yearly value of £300 and be tenable at any College in the University of Oxford for three consecutive academic years."

It was thus that the idea of Rhodes Scholarships was conceived. Rhodes himself primarily intended that the scholarships should be for young 'colonials', by whom he meant in his time, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders. Their life, he once said, was made vigorous by the rougher conditions of new countries. But the open air life, free from conventionality, although it introduced admirable qualities of toughness and self. reliance, needed in Rhodes' view to be balanced by the "finish" and breadth of view which the older sophisticated society of England and especially Oxford could offer.

In his directions as to the qualities of the men he wished to be chosen for scholarships, he made it clear that they were not intended for what he would have called "swots". He placed special importance on literary and scholastic attainments, but he also looked for success in outdoor sports, leadership, courage, devotion to duty, and the desire to protect the weak.

His scholars had to be men of action, leaders and opinion-makers, as the contemporary American sociologist would say, not dreamers in ivory towers.

Later, he extended the scholarships himself to young Americans (whom he probably regarded as good colonials gone wrong!) and Germans. Germans were included among his eligibles mainly because of his liking for the Kaiser who had co-operated with him in his ideas for a Cape to Cairo railway, but he rationalised his decisions in these words: "The object is that an understanding between the three Great Powers (Britain, America and Germany') will render war impossible and educational relations make the strongest tie."

In the eighteen nineties, those words had not the bitter taste they have to-day. But in a very changed world and in circumstances even the visionary Rhodes never guessed at, his scholarships still provide one of the links which forge international understanding.

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Zambia / History

CECIL RHODES

Africa Index

| Cecil Rhodes seized control of a major part of the British Empire. His policies, much more than those of the British government, shaped the context of much of southern Africa. | |
|

A VISION OF EMPIRE

Son of a British clergyman, Rhodes had first come to southern Africa for his health as a teenager. Here he had a vision of empire to which he dedicated the rest of his life.  Striking it rich in the Kimberly diamond fields of the Cape Colony launched him on a road to financial success which would allow him to realize his vision.
He became a wheeler-dealer, manipulating money markets, initiating takeovers, and promoting himself politically to achieve the goal of British control of southern Africa. By the closing decade of the 19th century, Cecil Rhodes dominated that area to an extent without parallel anywhere the world.

The United States had its 'robber barons', but Carnegie, Melon, Rockefeller, and others were in heated competition.  No one of them was able to exercise exclusive control over land, industry, finance, and politics as did Cecil Rhodes.

He had a monopoly on the diamond mines and effective control of the gold mining industry. Realizing the importance of the media and transportation, he had bought up newspapers and railroads. He was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (South Africa). As head of the British South Africa Company, Rhodes administered all the lands held by the company under charter from the British government.   In all, he controlled nearly a half-million square miles of the African continent.

APARTHEID

In the mid-1890s, Rhodes was key in drawing up a plan for the Cape Colony which would forever change the relationship of Africans and whites. Africans were confined on reserves, eliminating their former ability to be self-sustaining peoples. Hut taxes were imposed.  Only by becoming laborers for British agricultural, mining, and industrial interests could they sustain themselves.   Schools, transportation, hospitals and all social contexts were segregated.   African voters were disenfranchised.
It was not that Rhodes despised Africans but that he maintained a view of native peoples typical of the social Darwinism of the time.  To Rhodes, Africans were as children, at a stage of development well behind Europeans and especially the British. Expropriation of African land was a duty.  Rhodes contended that the British were the most superior race in the world. Africa could only be enhanced by an infusion of British settlers and the exertion of British control over the continent.

A DREAM UNREALIZED

For Rhodes, 'British' did not exclusively mean the British government.  It also meant individual Brits of entrepreneurial skill who could seize the land and save the Africans from themselves.   Rhodes counted himself as being foremost among these.  He saw himself one day as head a great Dominion of Southern Africa.
Although he espoused the idea of the British Empire, Rhodes was quick to promote his own empire where the two were in conflict.  His agents seized territory in the name of the British South African Company in advance of British government negotiators.  Rhodes threatened to declare Rhodesian independence in a dispute over his confiscation of Matablele cattle in Rhodesia.

At the end of his life, in 1902, Rhodes dream of uniting the various British holdings in southern Africa as a single federation was still unrealized.  He had been forced to relinquish from his position in the Cape Colony government six years earlier.  The 'Colossus of Africa' had retreated to his namesake colony and turned his attention to developing what would become Zimbabwe and Zambia.

SOURCES

| Thomas, Anthony, Rhodes, The Race for Africa, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996

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Cecil Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes, a financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. Borne on July 5, 1853 in Stortford, England. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890-96) and organiser of the giant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. (1888). By his will he established the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford (1902).

Early struggles and financial successes.

Rhodes was the son of the vicar of Bishop's Stortford, and the family's roots were in the countryside, where Cecil Rhodes always felt at home: tree planting and agricultural improvement were among his lifelong passions, though his earliest ambition was to be a barrister or a clergyman. His father was prosperous enough to send one son to Eton College, another to Winchester College, and three into the army. Cecil, however, was kept at home because of a weakness of the lungs and was educated at the local grammar school. Poor health also debarred him from the professional career he planned. Instead of going to the university, he was sent to South Africa in 1870 to work on a cotton farm, where his brother Herbert was already established.

The farm in Natal was not a success. On his arrival Rhodes found that his brother had already left for the diamond fields of Griqualand West. Although Herbert returned to the farm, and the two brothers continued stubbornly trying to grow cotton for a year, the "diamond fever" eventually overcame them. In 1871 they moved to Kimberley, the centre of mining, where life was even harder than in Natal. Herbert was restless and stayed only until 1873, but Cecil's characteristic determination kept him at Kimberley off and on for years.

For eight years, until he took a belated degree in 1881, he divided his life between Kimberley and Oxford. Both societies found him odd, though he did his best to conform outwardly to the conventions. At Oxford his eccentric habits, falsetto giggle, rambling monologues, and his unusual background intrigued the younger students around him. So did his philosophy of an almost mystical imperialism.

He gradually advanced from being a speculative digger to the status of a man of substance with ambitious ideas on the future of the diamond industry. His first partnerships were with young men as impoverished as himself, such as C.D. Rudd, with whom he formed De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. --so called after the De Beers mining claims, many of which he had acquired. Eventually, success brought new friends and also rivals. Alfred Beit, a German who knew the diamond market intimately, was his most valued friend. With Beit's help, Rhodes expanded his claims until all the De Beers mines were under his control. In 1887 he set about acquiring the Kimberley mine, which was mainly controlled by Barney Barnato. A furious competition to buy up shares ended in Rhodes's favour in 1888. He finally paid more than £5,000,000 ($25,000,000)--a generous settlement--for Barnato's holding and celebrated by making his rival a member of the Kimberley Club, into which Barnato had never before even been admitted.

Other lesser mines also fell under Rhodes's control, until by 1891 De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., owned 90 percent of the world's production of diamonds. He also acquired a large stake in the Transvaal gold mines, which had been discovered in 1885, and formed the Gold Fields of South Africa Company in 1887. Both Rhodes's major companies had terms in their articles of association allowing them to finance schemes of northward expansion.

Political involvement in Africa.

Rhodes never regarded moneymaking as an end in itself. "Painting the map red," building a railway from the Cape to Cairo, reconciling the Boers and the British under the British flag, even recovering the American colonies for the British Empire, were all part of his dream. With these ideas in view, he first went into politics in 1881, offering himself for election to the parliament of the Cape Colony in a constituency in which he had to depend on Boer support. He held it for the rest of his life. Though unimpressive as a speaker and contemptuous of parliamentary procedure, he earned respect by his original views. He made friends with many Boer politicians, he espoused the cause of the natives in what were then Basutoland and Bechuanaland (now Lesotho and Botswana), and always he had his eyes fixed on the north.

His first intervention in native policy came in 1882, when he was appointed to a commission to pacify Basutoland after a minor rebellion. The rebellion had been put down by the former British governor of the Egyptian Sudan, General Charles Gordon, acting for the Cape government. Gordon had succeeded not by force but by organising discussion meetings with the tribal chiefs. Rhodes was impressed by the man and his methods, though less favourably by the contempt that Gordon showed for financial reward.

His determination to keep open a road to the north involved him in many disputes. Other imperial powers--the Germans, Belgians, and Portuguese--were in competition for the uncharted interior of Africa, as were the Transvaal Boers. The missionaries were, in Rhodes's view, overly solicitous of native interests; the Cape government was weak; and the British government, which he called the "imperial factor," was too distant to understand his ideas. But he assiduously cultivated the government's representatives in Cape Town--particularly the high commissioner Sir Hercules Robinson, with profitable results.

The crucial area was Bechuanaland, through which ran the route used by the missionaries. Rhodes intended to use it to open up the northern territories of Mashonaland and Matabeleland (both now in Zimbabwe [Rhodesia]). Mineral wealth, communications, and, eventually, white settlement were his objectives. All the boundaries were unsettled, however, and many intrusions had to be frustrated first. Boers from the Transvaal, trying to annex slices of Bechuanaland, proclaimed two small independent republics in Stellaland and Goshen. In 1882 a boundary commission, to which Rhodes again secured appointment, was sent to settle the boundaries of Griqualand West. Rhodes persuaded the commission to extend its mandate to the two small republics. In 1884, when the Germans in South West Africa (now Namibia) declared a protectorate over two territories (which, along with Stellaland and Goshen, would have sealed off the Cape Colony from the north), he persuaded the high commissioner that the British government must intervene. By the London Convention of 1884, the two republics were excluded from the Transvaal, and the Cape government agreed to help finance a protectorate over Bechuanaland.

His settlement of the Bechuanaland question was also soon threatened, for the deputy commissioner in the new area antagonised the Boers. Rhodes insisted on his removal and was appointed in his place. He succeeded in conciliating the Boers of Stellaland but could not prevent Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, from declaring a protectorate over Goshen, from which he withdrew only after an expeditionary force was sent up from the Cape. A conference to settle the matter was held in February 1885 on the Vaal River, where Rhodes and Kruger met for the first time. These two stubborn men, each determined to dominate Africa, each ever ready to quote Scripture for his purpose, naturally failed to achieve any meeting of minds.

Although Kruger was forced to give up Goshen, Rhodes did not get everything his own way. It was decided that southern Bechuanaland should become a crown colony and northern Bechuanaland a protectorate. Rhodes, who wanted both annexed by the Cape Colony, resigned in protest in March 1885 and thereafter devoted strenuous efforts, both in Cape Town and London, to securing the transfer of the colony to the Cape.

Two men still stood in the way of Rhodes's plans for developing the north. One was Kruger, with his policy of "Africa for the Afrikaners"--the Boers. By the Franchise Law of 1890, he denied political rights to the Britons and other foreigners (Uitlanders) who had come to work the gold mines in the Transvaal. He also tried to extend Boer control to Mashonaland and Matabeleland. The ruler of the Matabele was King Lobengula, Rhodes's second obstacle. Kruger had approached him for a treaty and mining concessions in 1887, and so had many others. Lobengula, however, though uneducated, knew that once he let the white men in, he would never see their backs. The only white men he trusted were missionaries; and Rhodes duly found in John Moffat, the son of a famous missionary, a man to serve his purpose.

Once Moffat, as assistant commissioner for the crown colony of Bechuanaland, had, in February 1888, persuaded Lobengula to sign an exclusive treaty of friendship, Rhodes sent three of his trusted agents to obtain a mining concession based on the treaty. The concession was extracted from the reluctant Lobengula in October 1888: to the last, he hoped he had only allowed the white man to dig "a big hole." In fact, however, he had virtually signed away his kingdom, and Rhodes hastened to press the British government, through the high commissioner, to grant a charter to a new company, the British South Africa Company, to develop the new territory. In October 1889 the charter was granted, and Lobengula allowed the digging to begin.

Queen Victoria found Rhodes's imperialism attractive, no less than his courtly rebuttal of the accusation of being a woman hater: "How could I dislike a sex to which your Majesty belongs?" The upshot of his successful propaganda was that the charter granted by the British government went far beyond what Lobengula had conceded. There was no northern limit on it; and Rhodes intended to extend the chartered company's control to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi), as well as to the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now in Botswana).

In 1890 Rhodes's Pioneers began their hazardous march into Matabeleland and thence to Mashonaland, where they established a fort in September, to be called Salisbury, after the British prime minister. In the following year Harry Johnston took over the administration of Nyasaland in a dual capacity, as commissioner of the British government and an employee of the chartered company. Although eventually the protectorate reverted fully to the British government, Rhodes's influence was felt both north and south of the Zambezi River, and soon the new territories were called by his name.

Policies as prime minister of Cape Colony.

In the meantime, he had returned to office in 1890 in the only post big enough for him, as prime minister of Cape Colony. For five years he proved a successful and imaginative prime minister. He acquired a property called Groote Schuur, which he rebuilt in the Dutch colonial style and bequeathed as an official residence for future prime ministers of the Union of South Africa. There he lavishly entertained Dutch and British inhabitants of the Cape Colony and eminent visitors of all nationalities. Everything he undertook was on a massive scale.

In parliament he cultivated the support of the Afrikaner Bond without losing the goodwill of British liberals. His agricultural policies were sensible and effective. In native policy he had to move cautiously. His Franchise and Ballot Act (1892) was passed, limiting the native vote by financial and educational qualifications. The Glen Grey Act (1894), assigning an area for exclusively African development, was introduced from the highest motives: "a Bill for Africa," as Rhodes proudly called it. His main aim was to prevent the Dutch and British quarreling over such policies. To him that involved the risk of "mixing up the native question with the race question."

He also sought to unite the Boers and the British on his northern policy. The prospects were good because Kruger's obstinacy alienated the Cape Dutch. To ensure that commercial traffic did not have to reach the Transvaal through the Cape Colony, Kruger had built a railway to Delagoa Bay. Then in 1894 he closed the "drifts," or fords, of the Vaal River to prevent the transport of goods by wagon, besides imposing heavy duties on Cape produce. Rhodes went to the Transvaal capital to protest, but in vain. Kruger was compelled to yield only after a declaration by Rhodes's attorney general that he was in breach of the London Convention, coupled with a threat by Joseph Chamberlain, who had become British colonial secretary in 1895, to support a military expedition.

Rhodes's patience had begun to wear thin even earlier, partly because he knew his health was precarious, partly because he learned that the gold deposits of the Transvaal were enormous, whereas those of Mashonaland were proving poor. His northern policy was encountering unexpected frustrations. The chartered company was in financial difficulties, its resources being overstretched. Although Rhodes's agents secured some new territories for the company, elsewhere he was forestalled. An Anglo-German agreement of 1889 gave a strip of land to Germany, cutting off Bechuanaland from the north. The Belgian king Leopold anticipated Rhodes by laying claim to Katanga (1890). The Anglo-Portuguese Convention of 1891 ended his hopes of eliminating Portugal from Africa. Harry Johnston proved uncooperative in administering Nyasaland. When Rhodes paid his first visit to Rhodesia in 1891, he found the pioneers in an angry mood; to pacify them, he helped them generously out of his own pocket.

Serious trouble broke out in 1893, when Lobengula tried to reassert his control over Mashonaland. A short, sharp war ended in the total defeat and death of Lobengula. Rhodes was then at the pinnacle of his achievement, but still the wider union of southern Africa eluded him. He was growing petulant and impatient and was visibly aging. By 1895 he was determined to settle accounts with the last obstacle, President Kruger.

There was already talk of using force to remedy the grievances of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal. The Uitlanders formed a National Union to support their cause, with Rhodes's brother Frank among its leaders. Kruger sought the support of Germany, and in 1895 he again closed the "drifts" across the Vaal. Once more he was forced to withdraw, and by this time a conspiracy against him was under way. Rhodes knew about it and worked actively to foster it.

Effects of the Jameson raid on Rhodes's career.

Chamberlain was privy to the plan, but no one foresaw what actually resulted. The National Union in Johannesburg lost heart and decided not to act. Rhodes, the high commissioner Sir Herbert Robinson, and Chamberlain all assumed that the plan had been called off; but Leander Starr Jameson, Rhodes's personally appointed administrator of Matabele, recklessly decided to force the hand of the Uitlanders by invading the Transvaal on his own. He launched the famous raid on Dec. 29, 1895. It was a fiasco, his whole force being captured apart from a few killed. Rhodes was compelled to resign all his offices, not only in the Cape government but also in the chartered company, but he refused to denounce Jameson.

The raid was an almost complete disaster for Rhodes. Jameson and his colleagues were sent to prison; Kruger's power was consolidated; the Dutch and British colonials were more deeply split than ever; Rhodesia and Bechuanaland were taken over by the imperial government. Only the charter was preserved, and Rhodes spent the rest of his life promoting developments in the north. He even won public sympathy. His last years were full of disappointments, both personal and political.

Early in 1896, while Rhodes was in England, there was a serious revolt in Matabeleland. Rhodes returned by way of Egypt and took an active part in suppressing the revolt. He finally brought it to an end by holding a peace conference. On this occasion Rhodes found the site in the Matopo Hills that he called the "View of the World" and chose it for his burial place.

His last years were soured by an unfortunate relationship with an aristocratic adventuress, Princess Radziwill, who sought to manipulate Rhodes and Milner and even Lord Salisbury, the English prime minister, to promote her ideas of the British Empire. Rhodes was unused to scheming women, nor could the young bachelors surrounding him protect him from her. She forged letters and bills of exchange in his name and was finally sent to prison, but not before she had caused him much annoyance and scandal. In 1901, while he was in Europe, he was recalled to Cape Town to give evidence at her trial. His last political act on his return was to support Milner in suspending the constitution of the colony until the South African War, which broke out in October 1899, was over. He was, however, already dying of an incurable heart disease. Before either the war or even Princess Radziwill's trial was over, he died. His last journey through Africa in the funeral train to the Matopo Hills was a triumphal procession.

When his will was read in April 1902, his reputation immediately rose to new heights. He had devised an imaginative scheme of awarding scholarships at Oxford to young men from the colonies and from the United States and Germany. This appealed to the public instinct for a more disinterested kind of imperialism. Most of his fortune was devoted to the scholarships. As the will forbade disqualification on grounds of race, many non-white students have benefited from the scholarships, though it is doubtful that that 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 "civilised." But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming "civilised" as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing.