Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902)

Cecil Rhodes

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Above: cartoon postcard of Rhodes and General Cronje, 1900: "Greetings from Kimberley" (GB 0162 MSS. Afr. r. 256).

Rhodes was born in 1853 at Bishops Stortford and educated at the town's grammar school till 1869, when his health broke down. Sent to Natal in southern Africa in 1870, initially to grow cotton, he later began prospecting for diamonds in Kimberley. As his claim prospered, Rhodes began amalgamating several smaller holdings in the De Beers Mine. By the 1880s he held one of the biggest claims in Kimberley and, after successfully launching a legal attack on his main rival, he founded the De Beers Consolidated Mines Co., gaining a virtual monopoly on the South African mining industry and on world production. He also founded Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa in 1887 after the discovery of gold in the Transvaal.

An avid classicist, he returned to England in 1873 and matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, though a chill which spread to his heart and lungs, thought at the time to be immediately life-threatening, prevented him from graduating until 1881. While at Oxford, he came into contact with the strands of political ideology which would later lead to the scramble for colonies by the European states. The effect this had on Rhodes is evident from his 1877 will, in which he disposed a future fortune to the establishment of a secret society dedicated to the extension of British rule worldwide.

During the early part of the decade, the Transvaal began to develop satellite republics in the lands of the Tswana north of the Orange River and to forge agreements with Germany (which had annexed South-West Africa in 1884). In 1880, Rhodes was elected to the Cape legislature, and cultivated the friendships of key men as his influence increased. His lobbying of the British government through the Cape legislature, together with anti-Boer propaganda in Britain itself, led to the establishment of a British colony in Tswana territory in 1885 and of the Bechuanaland Protectorate to the north.

In the 1880s there were rumours of the discovery of gold in the territories of the Ndebele and Shona peoples north of the Transvaal. In the face of competition from German and Transvaal interests, the king of the Ndebele, Lobengula was persuaded by Rhodes to grant him mining rights in Ndebele territory. This grant was used in 1889 as the basis for the foundation of the British South Africa Company, a chartered organisation with quasi-governmental powers. The territory immediately under its control was named Rhodesia. The initial actions of the Company in Ndebele territory, and the pressure on land by incoming settlers led to war with the Ndebele, 1894-1895 and 1897, though British success was assured by a mixture of technical superiority and Rhodes's own diplomacy. During the 1890s Rhodes extended the Company's control northwards to the shores of Lake Nyasa.

In 1890 Rhodes was elected Prime Minister of Cape Colony. During his premiership he began the first stretch of his planned Cape-Cairo railway line (he later constructed a telegraph line between the same points). He made efforts to develop Afrikaner farms and introduced dues favourable to Dutch farmers, while at the same time restricting non-European voting rights and effectively establishing an Africans-only residential policy in Glen Grey. His premiership ended after implication in the Jameson Raid of 1895, involving an attempt to incite unrest in the Transvaal. His standing was further diminished by his support for the South African War of 1899-1902, during which he was besieged in Kimberley. Shortly afterwards, his health deteriorated, and he died in 1902 at Muizenberg. His will bequeathed part of his fortune to the foundation of 160 scholarships at Oxford for men of the colonies, the U.S.A., and Germany.

Postcard image copyright © 2003 Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.