Cecil Rhodes

No one in class signed up to write about Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), so I thought I could pitch in. One of the richest men in the world, Rhodes was a huge figure in the British colonial domination of Africa, as this image suggests. The image is a political cartoon created when Rhodes announced plans to put a telegraph between South Africa and Egypt -- both British colonies. Rhodes also tirelessly advocated for an enormous "Cape to Cairo" railroad, that would link the British colonies up and down the east side of Africa.

Born in England, Rhodes managed to obtain almost a complete monopoly of the diamonds in South Africa -- far and away the world's most important source of diamonds. He started the De Beers Diamond Company, the powerful international diamond monopoly depicted in the recent movie "Blood Diamond."

A governor in the Cape Colony of South African, Rhodes helped instigate the Boer War (see Peter's blog). He tricked, cheated, and threatened various African people out of their land to eventually control the area that became the country Rhodesia, named after Rhodes himself. (Now called Zimbabwe.)

Rhodes was a complete racist. He believed that the "British race" was destined to rule all others and for that reason he was a huge advocate of the British empire, wanted even to put America back under British rule. He created a secret club and a world famous scholarship program to bring promising young men from the colonies to England where they could be trained as leaders of the British empire. These Rhodes Scholarships continue today -- one of those who received this award and studied at Oxford was Bill Clinton, later to be the US president.

Here is a famous quote from Cecil Rhodes,

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.