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Documents on Cecil Rhodes
Document One
Cecil Rhodes
by Lawrence James
“Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo Saxon race but one Empire? What a dream, but yet it is probable, it is possible.” Cecil Rhodes wrote this in his "Confession of Faith" when he was 23. It provides an insight into his insurmountable belief that with willpower and application anything was possible. Circumstances prevented Rhodes from taking a global stage, so he made southern Africa his stamping ground, planting it with Union Jacks and settlers of British stock.
Rhodes’ plans for the advancement of British interests in southern Africa were made possible by his vast wealth. He had come by his fortune through his precocious activities as a diamond miner and entrepreneur. Rhodes had taken over his brother Herbert's three claims in the de Beers mine in Kimberley when he was 17. He proved an outstanding businessman and in 1872 when the other miners felt they had hit rock bottom and there were no further diamonds to mine, Rhodes purchased as many claims from despairing miners as he could in the Kimberley mines. Such bold decisions were to become his hallmark. He was not frightened to buck the trend and he believed that there were more diamonds as they were forced up from below. His gamble paid off.
Rhodes' mines went from strength to strength and in 1888, through a combination of persuasion, bullying and sharp business practice he convinced the owners of the other Kimberley mining companies to amalgamate and form Rhodes De Beers Consolidated Mines. It was the leading diamond company in the world, owning all the South African mines and thus 90% of global diamond production. This added to the major share Rhodes had acquired in the gold industry after the Witwatersrand gold strike in Transvaal in 1886.
Such wealth was the means to a glorious end for Rhodes. In 1881 he became a member of the Cape Parliament. Rhodes had stated, "Africa is still lying ready for us. It is our duty to take it." By 1890 he was Prime Minister of Cape Colony and his ambitions for the Anglo Saxon rule of southern Africa had moved towards Zambesia. Rhodes' British South Africa Company obtained mining ad farming rights in Mashonaland, having successfully duped the Matabele King, Lobengula. By 1896 Rhodes' company forces had put down all resistance to his advances and a new addition to the British Empire was aptly named Rhodesia after its founder.
The only stumbling block to Rhodes' dream of British supremacy in South Africa was the protectionist Boer Republic of Transvaal. Following the discovery of a vast gold reef on the Witwatersrand Transvaal was becoming increasingly wealthy and powerful. Rhodes answer to this problem was a coup de main in which Rhodesian and Bechuanaland gendarmerie would enter Transvaal in support of an uitlander uprising in Johannesburg. What became known as the Jameson Raid was botched from the start and the raiders were easily intercepted and captured by the Boers. Rhodes' shady part in the fiasco led to his retirement from public life. The ramifications of the raid were far reaching as it was seen as the first round of a contest between Britain and Transvaal, which ultimately culminated in the Boer War between 1899 and 1902.
Rhodes’ death led to prolonged mourning. He was ruthless, amoral and instinctively acquisitive yet he had single-mindedly followed his plan "to make the world English." He had added Northern and Southern Rhodesia to the Empire and he was a truly useful instrument for the preservation and extension of Britain's influence in southern Africa at a time when it was in jeopardy. "So little done. So much to do," were the words falsely attributed as Rhodes’ last. However, the sentiments were entirely appropriate to this most resourceful and visionary icon of Empire.
Source: PBS Web site Empire Videos-Queen Victoria
http://www.pbs.org/empires/victoria/empire/rhodes.html
Document Two
Cecil Rhodes
1. Cecil John Rhodes (July 5, 1853 – March 26, 1902) was an English businessman and the effective founder of the state of Rhodesia (which was named after him). Rhodesia (later Northern and Southern Rhodesia) eventually became Zambia and Zimbabwe. Rhodes profited greatly by exploiting Southern Africa's natural resources, proceeds of which founded the Rhodes Scholarship upon his death.
2. England
Rhodes attended the grammar school at Bishop's Stortford. He fell ill shortly after leaving school, and, as his lungs were affected, it was decided that he should visit his brother who had recently emigrated to Natal, in Southern Africa. He arrived in Durban on 1 September 1870. He brought £3000 his aunt had lent him and used it to invest in diamond diggings in Kimberley.
3. South Africa
After a brief stay with the Surveyor-General of Natal, Dr. P. C. Sutherland, in Pietermaritzburg, Rhodes joined his brother Herbert on his cotton farm in the Umkomaas valley in Natal. In October 1871 Rhodes left the colony for the diamond fields of Kimberley. He supervised the working of his brother's claim and speculated on his behalf. Among his associates in the early days were John X Merriman and C. D. Rudd, who later became his partner in the De Beers Mining Company.
4. Education
In 1873 Rhodes left his diamond fields in the care of his partner, Rudd, and sailed for England to complete his studies. He was admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term in 1873 and only returned for his second term in 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 Rochefort Maguire, later a fellow of All Souls College and a director of the British South Africa Company, and Charles Metcalfe. His university career engendered in him an admiration for the Oxford 'system' which was eventually to mature into his scholarship scheme: 'Wherever you turn your eye — except in science — an Oxford man is at the top of the tree'.
5. Diamonds
While at Oxford, Rhodes continued to prosper in Kimberley. Before his departure for Oxford he and C. D. Rudd had moved from the Kimberley mine to invest in the more costly claims of what was known as old De Beers (Vooruitzicht) which owed its name to Johannes Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus de Beer, the original owners of the Vooruitzicht farm.
In 1874 and 1875 the diamond fields were in the grip of depression, but Rhodes and Rudd were among those who stayed to consolidate their interests. They believed that diamonds would be numerous in the hard blue ground that had been exposed after the softer, yellow layer near the surface had been worked out. During this time the technical problem of clearing out the water that was flooding the mines became serious and he and Rudd obtained the contract for pumping the water out of the three main mines.
In April 1880 Rhodes and Rudd launched the De Beers Mining Company after the amalgamation of a number of individual claims. With £200,000 of capital the Company, of which Rhodes was secretary, owned the largest interest in the mine.
6. Politics
In 1880 Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. With the incorporation of Griqualand West into the Cape Colony in 1877, the area obtained six seats in the Cape House of Assembly. Rhodes chose the constituency of Barkley West, a rural constituency in which Boer voters predominated. Barkley West remained faithful to Rhodes even after the Jameson Raid, and he continued as its member until his death.
The chief preoccupation of the Cape Parliament when Rhodes became a member was the future of Basutoland, where the ministry of Sir Gordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after a rebellion, the Gun War, in 1880. The ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its disarmament policy to the Basuto. In 1890 Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and implemented laws that would benefit mine and industry owners. He introduced the Glen Grey Act to push Black people from their lands and make way for industrial development.
Rhodes' policies were instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South Africa. He did not, however, have direct political power over the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. He often disagreed with the Transvaal government's policies, and felt he could use his money and his power to overthrow the Boer government and install a British colonial government supporting mine-owners' interests in its place. In 1895 Rhodes supported an attack on the Transvaal, the infamous Jameson Raid. It was a failure, and Rhodes had to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape.
7. Rhodesia
Rhodes used his wealth to pursue his dream of creating a British Empire in Africa. His British South Africa Company, which had its own paramilitary police force, was used to control Mashonaland, in present-day Zimbabwe. The company had hoped to start a 'new Rand' from the ancient gold mines of the Mashona, but the gold had largely been depleted long before; so many of the white settlers who accompanied the British South Africa Company to Mashonaland became farmers. When the Matabele and the Mashona rebelled against the coming of the white settlers to their land, the British South Africa Company crushed them. The conquered land was named "Rhodesia" in honour of Cecil Rhodes. As the company's influence extended north, land north of the Zambezi was claimed by the company, and named Northern Rhodesia. Today, these territories form the states of Zimbabwe and Zambia.
8. Vision and views
Rhodes' vision for Africa was "to paint the map (British) red". To achieve this goal, he was very instrumental in the development of a Cape-Cairo railway route. In his 1877 "Confession of Faith", Rhodes stated, "I contend that we (the British) are the finest race in the world; and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race". Though his prejudice against the African people probably did not motivate his conquests, it was certainly an excuse for his seizure of African resources, and subjugation of its people.
9. Rhodes' Will and the Rhodes Scholarship
Although he remained a leading figure in the politics of southern Africa, especially during the Boer War, he was dogged by ill health throughout his relatively-short life.
In his will, he left his money for the establishment of a secret society that would enable Britain to rule the entire productive world. The exact words are as follows:
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.
As a result of his will, the Rhodes Scholarships, which enable foreign nationals to study at the University of Oxford, came into being. Rhodes died in 1902, and was considered at the time one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Rhodes' will also left a large area of land on the slopes of Devil's Peak (the "Rhodes Estate" or "Rhodes' Gift") as a campus for the University of Cape Town. Rhodes' house in Cape Town, Groote Schuur, is now the official residence of the President of South Africa.
In 2004, he was voted 56th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes
Document Three
Cecil Rhodes
Born the son of a vicar in 1853, Cecil Rhodes was a sickly child. Due to his poor health, he was sent to Natal to join with his brother. After failing to grow cotton there, together they attempted to make their fortune in the Diamond mines. Cecil saw alternative methods for making money by providing services to the other miners. He quickly realized the potential for riches by creating a monopoly. At first, this was done with water, but he then applied this principal to acquiring diamond concessions. His efforts at amalgamating paid off with an enormous personal fortune and the creation of the De Beers consolidated Mines Company in 1888 and the creation of Consolidated Goldfields. Unfortunately, for Rhodes he missed much of the opportunity to create a foothold in the newly discovered goldfields of the Transvaal. His ruthlessness for business was curtailed by the personal distress at losing one of his closest aides and confidants.
Rhodes used much of his personal fortune in the field of politics. Despite earlier support for Irish Home Rule, Rhodes quickly became a spokesman and activist for imperial expansion. His most famous ambition was to create a railway along a continuous pink strip of land from the Cape Colony to Cairo. He used his political skills and money to become the premier of the Cape Colony in 1890 and espouse his imperial ambitions on a much grander scale. He lobbied hard for the annexation of Bechuanaland and later, when he was becoming disappointed at the lack of political will at the Colonial Office, he even formed his own company to claim land in the interior of Africa. The British South Africa Company achieved a Royal Charter in 1889 and proceeded to negotiate and trick its way into the lands of the Mashona, Matabele and beyond, under the wily auspices of his right hand man Dr. Jameson. Later, their ambition would be their political and economic undoing when Dr. Jameson attempted to invade Transvaal in order to support an abortive coup. The political fall out from this adventure forced Cecil to resign his premiership of the Cape Colony.
Cecil Rhodes never lost his passion for his imperial dreams and spent much time planning and organizing the colonies that were to bear his name; Rhodesia. When the Africans in these colonies rose up in rebellion to his company's rule, he personally conducted negotiations with the leaders of the Matabele tribes. During the Boer war, he helped to organize and fund the defenses of Kimberley in the siege.
Rhodes was a very complex and contradictory individual. His true feelings and ideology have never fully been understood by historians and biographers. What is clear is that Rhodes was a very personable leader who had the ability to inspire others and attract attention to his causes and ideas. On the flipside, he was a ruthless businessman who could often be accused of being little more than a bully. His treatment of Africans was equally contradictory; he often talked about them in a highly derogatory manner and virtually pioneered the 'Apartheid' system of separating the Africans working in his mines from the outside world. Yet, he also seems to have taken an uncommon interest in their cultures and language and had a respect and understanding for Africans that would have seemed remarkably liberal for his era.
Rhodes left a will that was to create one of the most successful educational endowments of all time; The Rhodes Scholarships. These were open to any of the Teutonic peoples; Britons, Germans and Americans. And had the express purpose of enabling the academic elites of these countries to mingle and understand one another better in an attempt to create an Anglo-Saxon empire across the world. Even in his death, Rhodes' dreams were bigger and more comprehensive than most other peoples'.
Document Four
Cecil Rhodes:
Lowdown Thief or Hero for the Nation?
Monica Flores
Do you ever wonder why names of places seem to change? If you look at this part of the world on maps before 1980, you'll see Northern Rhodesia, which is present-day Zambia, and Southern Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. I knew about Rhodesia, but I didn't know that the "Rhodes" in Rhodesia is the same "Rhodes" as in the Rhodes Scholarships (the one that President Bill Clinton of the US received), and the same "Rhodes" as the statue in the Company Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa. The statue points north, back to England, exhorting the early colonialists to build, conquer, and colonize everywhere from Cape Town to Cairo.