Cecil rhodes biography summary of thomas

Rhodes's entry into Cape politics in was forceful and set the tone for his imperial ambitions and handiwork in later years. He became the spokesman for the mining industry, pushing forward the Diamond Trade Act of in parliament, with the help of the Cape Argus newspaper, which he had bought for the purpose. Mining interests were soon allied to an expansionist imperial interest when Rhodes successfully argued for the disannexation of Basutoland now Lesotho from the Cape Colony and the expansion of British rule toward the north of Griqualand West in order to curb both Afrikaner and Tswana ambitions for control over land and water in the area.

After , when gold was first prospected on the Witwatersrand, the northward expansion of British colonial control increased its pace. Rhodes was interested in gold, but decided to go for the exploration of this mineral north of the Limpopo River in the Ndebele kingdom, thus bypassing the Boer-controlled South African Republic Transvaal and at the same time leading the British effort in the scramble for this part of Africa, now contested by Britain, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium.

The formation of the British South Africa Company BSAC , chartered by the British government in , allowed Rhodes and his partners to exploit and extend administrative control over a vast, if ill-defined, area of southern and central Africa. Within a couple of years, the BSAC not only annexed most of the territory now known as Zimbabwe formerly Southern Rhodesia , but the company also incorporated what are now Zambia and Malawi by way of treaties with local leaders.

Underlying the BSAC's actions was a promise to populate the areas brought under its control with settlers, which would allow for an effective British occupation against contending European powers, and introduce the necessary capitalist development to the interior at minimum cost. In the Cape, Rhodes's political star was rising. From the mids, Rhodes supported the policies of the powerful Afrikaner Bond, a political party founded in , with regard to the control of African land ownership, franchise, and labor in the Cape.

Through judicious agreements with the Afrikaner Bond and some of the liberal parliamentarians, Rhodes managed to become prime minister of the Cape Colony in When he lost the support of the liberals in , a general election brought him back stronger and with enhanced support from the Afrikaner Bond. Rhodes's second ministry, in which he also acted as minister for Native Affairs, saw the inclusion of all the remaining independent African polities into the Cape Colony.

In Britain, his status as a colonial politician was confirmed with his appointment to the Privy Council, the traditional council of advisors to the British Crown, similar to a council of state, in The construction of a railway line between the Cape and Transvaal in was popular with the Bond, but eventually led to a sharp conflict with the South African Republic led by Paul Kruger — In the next four years, the conflict built up and eventually led to a plan to incorporate the South African Republic.

Rhodes and others, backed by British businessmen on the Witwatersrand and the British colonial secretary, made use of a trumped-up conflict about disenfranchised British immigrants Uitlanders in the South African Republic to stage an armed overthrow. Leander Starr Jameson — , a BSAC agent, invaded the Republic on his own accord, and against Rhodes's wish to postpone the invasion, in late with the British South Africa Police Force, only to find that there was no support from inside.

The raid forced Rhodes to resign and lost him much of the Afrikaner sympathy he had so carefully built up. It also caused a final rift between Afrikaners and the British, both in the Cape and the Boer republics. The affair also lost Rhodes his position as managing director of the BSAC and threatened the charter of the company. It was only Liberal parliamentarian Joseph Chamberlain 's — support of Rhodes before a House of Commons inquiry, in exchange for Rhodes's silence about the former's complicity, that prevented the revocation of the charter.

In the aftermath of the raid, the Ndebele of Southern Rhodesia rose against the white settlers in their area, and they were soon followed by the Shona people. Rhodes intervened personally and managed to diffuse the uprising by initiating successful secret negotiations with the Ndebele leadership, against the wishes of the white settlers. One result of the uprising was that the British government for the first time intervened directly in BSAC affairs by appointing a resident commissioner to the area.

The era of colonialism and settler domination had started. Despite the political setbacks of the s, Rhodes returned to the political scene of the Cape Colony in the election, now as leader of the so-called Progressives in the Cape parliament, and against the Afrikaner Bond. When the latter party won the general election, Rhodes's role in Cape politics was finally over.

In the last four years of his life, Rhodes stayed in England for a considerable time. He also took time to fight legal battles against accusations made over his role in the Jameson Raid, and against the Polish fortune-seeker Princess Catherine Radziwill — , who first tried to attach herself to Rhodes and later—when unsuccessful in her attempts—blackmailed him.

Suffering from deteriorating health, Rhodes died at his Cape cottage on March 26, At his own request, he was buried on the Matopo Plateau in Southern Rhodesia two weeks later. Marks, Shula and Stanley Trapido. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Michell, Lewis. The Life of the Rt. Cecil John Rhodes , — , 2 vols. London: Edward Arnold, New York : Oxford University Press, Tamarkin, M.

London: Cass, Cecil Rhodes, his Political Life and Speeches, — London: Chapman and Hall, Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. January 8, Retrieved January 08, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.

Rhodes was the embodiment of late nineteenth-century rapacious capitalism and imperialism. His activities did much to shape important objects of social scientific study with respect to southern Africa: monopoly capitalism, migrant labor , and colonialism. Rhodes was born to an English parson of modest circumstances. At the age of seventeen, he emigrated to southern Africa.

Rhodes arrived in , three years after a diamond-mining rush had begun in an area soon to be annexed by Britain and incorporated into the Cape Colony. The following year, Rhodes left for the diamond fields, where the town of Kimberley emerged to support the mines. In Rhodes and Charles Dunnell Rudd — formed the De Beers Mining Company to pursue amalgamation of claims, by then considered essential to continued profitability of the mines.

Amalgamation was intended to remedy major problems of production and marketing. First, as the mines went deeper, enormous amounts of machinery and technical expertise were needed to shore up walls and to cart ore to the surface. Though operations were capital-intensive, they were also labor-intensive, requiring increasing numbers of African men who came to the mines as migrant workers.

Second, the huge volume of diamonds being produced from the Kimberley mines meant that it was necessary to limit the numbers reaching the market in order for sales to be profitable. Amalgamation enabled De Beers to solve these problems through centrally organizing flows of capital and labor into the mines and the flow of diamonds out of them.

Key innovations, introduced in , were closed compounds to house African workers and legislation to control illicit diamond buying. Closed compounds enabled mining concerns to closely supervise workers, bringing about tighter labor discipline and providing a model for later mining enterprises in southern Africa. Kimberley capitalists invested heavily in the Rand, but Rhodes was late to do so, securing poor claims.

As a result, his interest was drawn in two directions: toward politics and toward possible mineral discoveries in areas then beyond colonial control north of the Limpopo River. Meanwhile, oppressive BSAC policies toward Africans in Rhodesia led to a widespread uprising in to that was put down at great cost in African lives. His rhetoric and actions thus place him as one of a handful of white power brokers in late nineteenth-century southern Africa who shaped the regimes of alienation of land, exploitation of minerals, and racist regimentation of labor that were to define white-ruled southern Africa for most of the twentieth century.

He is buried on a hilltop in the Matopos hills of southwestern Zimbabwe, a site sacred to indigenous peoples. His grave thus is a continual reminder of colonial conquest and insensitivity, while its broad vistas give expression to imperial desires to be master of all one surveys. Davenport, T. South Africa : A Modern History. Houndmills, U.

Rotberg, Robert I. New York : Oxford University Press. Worger, William H. The English businessman and financier Cecil Rhodes founded the modern diamond industry and controlled the British South Africa Company, which acquired Rhodesia and Zambia as British territories. He was also a noted philanthropist working for charity and founded the Rhodes scholarships.

Cecil John Rhodes was born on July 5, , at Bishop's Stortford, England, one of nine sons of the parish vicar priest. While his brothers were sent off to attend better schools, Cecil's poor health forced him to stay at home and attend the local grammar school. Instead of attending college, sixteen-year-old Cecil was sent to South Africa to work on a cotton farm.

Arriving in October , he grew cotton with his brother Herbert in Natal , South Africa, a harsh environment. Soon the brothers learned that growing cotton was no way to build a fortune and by "diamond fever" was sweeping the region with promises of fame and fortune. The two brothers soon left Natal for the newly developed diamond field at Kimberley, South Africa, an even less inviting environment.

In the s Rhodes laid the foundation for his later massive fortune by working an open-pit mine where he personally supervised his workers and even sorted diamonds himself. The hard work would pay off as Rhodes developed a moderate fortune by investing in diamond claims, initiating mining techniques, and in forming the De Beers Mining Company.

In Rhodes returned to England to attend Oxford University. During his education, Rhodes split his time between South Africa and Oxford, where he did not fit in socially but finally earned a bachelor of arts degree in During the mids, Rhodes spent six months alone, wandering the unsettled plains of Transvaal , South Africa. There, he developed his philosophies on British Imperialism, where the British Empire rules over its foreign colonies.

These philosophies consisted of a "dream" where a brotherhood of elite Anglo-Saxons whites would occupy all of Africa, the Holy Land in the Middle East , and other parts of the world. After a serious heart attack in , Rhodes revealed his ideas of British Imperialism when he made his first will. In it, Rhodes called for the settlement of his as-yetunearned fortune to found a secret society that would extend British rule throughout the world and colonize most parts of it with British settlers, leading to the "ultimate recovery of the United States of America" by the British Empire.

From to Rhodes's star rose steadily. Eventually, he was inspired to develop his scholarship scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye—except in science—an Oxford man is at the top of the tree". Although initially he did not approve of the organisation, he continued to be a South African Freemason until his death in The shortcomings of the Freemasons, in his opinion, later caused him to envisage his own secret society with the goal of bringing the entire world under British rule.

During his years at Oxford, Rhodes continued to prosper in Kimberley. Before his departure for Oxford, he and C. Rudd had moved from the Kimberley Mine to invest in the more costly claims of what was known as old De Beers Vooruitzicht. It was named after Johannes Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus, who occupied the farm.

After purchasing the land in from David Danser, a Koranna chief in the area, David Stephanus Fourie, forebear of Claudine Fourie-Grosvenor, had allowed the de Beers and various other Afrikaner families to cultivate the land. In and , 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. Rhodes and Rudd obtained the contract for pumping water out of the three main mines.

After Rhodes returned from his first term at Oxford, he lived with Robert Dundas Graham, who later became a mining partner with Rudd and Rhodes. De Beers was established with funding from N. In , Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. With the earlier incorporation of Griqualand West into the Cape Colony under the Molteno Ministry in , the area had obtained six seats in the Cape House of Assembly.

Rhodes chose the rural and predominately Boer constituency of Barkly West , which would remain loyal to Rhodes until his death. When Rhodes became a member of the Cape Parliament , the chief goal of the assembly was to help decide the future of Basutoland. The Sprigg ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its policy of disarming all native Africans to those of the Basotho nation, who resisted.

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. To quote Richard 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".

We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India , in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa. Rhodes also introduced educational reform to the area. His policies were instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South Africa, such as the Hut tax. Rhodes did not, however, have direct political power over the independent Boer Republic of the Transvaal.

In , believing he could use his influence to overthrow the Boer government, [ 10 ] Rhodes supported the Jameson Raid , an unsuccessful attempt to create an uprising in the Transvaal that had the tacit approval of Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain. Frank Rhodes to jail in Transvaal convicted of high treason and nearly sentenced to death, and contributed to the outbreak of the Second Boer War.

In , 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. Rhodes used his wealth and that of his business partner Alfred Beit and other investors to pursue his dream of creating a British Empire in new territories to the north by obtaining mineral concessions from the most powerful indigenous chiefs.

Rhodes' 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 British Commissioners , and through them organized British protectorates 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. The imperial factor was a double-edged sword: Rhodes did not want the bureaucrats of the Colonial 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 British missionaries , 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 the Portuguese , the Germans or the Boers 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. Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a mining concession from Lobengula , King of the Ndebele of Matabeleland.

In he tried again. He sent John Smith Moffat , son of the missionary Robert 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 the Rudd 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. 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 This entity renamed itself the United Concessions Company in , and soon after sold the Rudd Concession to the Chartered Company for 1,, shares.

When Colonial Office functionaries discovered this chicanery in , they advised Secretary of State for the Colonies Viscount Knutsford to consider revoking the concession, but no action was taken. He obtained further concessions and treaties north of the Zambezi , such as those in Barotseland the Lochner Concession with King Lewanika in , which was similar to the Rudd Concession ; and in the Lake Mweru area Alfred Sharpe 's Kazembe concession.

Rhodes also sent Sharpe to get a concession over mineral-rich Katanga , but met his match in ruthlessness: when Sharpe was rebuffed by its ruler Msiri , King Leopold II of Belgium obtained a concession over Msiri's dead body for his Congo Free State. Rhodes commented: "It is humiliating to be utterly beaten by these niggers. Johnston shared Rhodes's expansionist views, but he and his successors were not as pro-settler as Rhodes, and disagreed on dealings with Africans.

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 s. Rhodes went to Matabeleland after his resignation as Cape Colony Premier, and appointed himself Colonel in his own column of irregular troops moving from Salisbury to Bulawayo 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 , 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.

Rhodes and a few colleagues walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo Hills. 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 the Company in charge of administering the territory north of the Limpopo even as it became a Crown colony.

The scandal attached to his name did not prevent him rejoining the board of the BSAC in By the end of , the territories over which the BSAC had concessions or treaties, collectively called "Zambesia" after the Zambezi River flowing through the middle, comprised an area of 1,, km 2 between the Limpopo River and Lake Tanganyika. In May , its name was officially changed to "Rhodesia", reflecting Rhodes's popularity among settlers who had been using the name informally since The designation Southern Rhodesia was officially adopted in for the part south of the Zambezi, which later became Zimbabwe; and the designations North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia were used from for the territory which later became Northern Rhodesia , then Zambia.

Rhodes decreed in his will that he was to be buried in Matopos Hills now Matobo Hills. After his death in the Cape in , his body was transported by train to Bulawayo.

Cecil rhodes biography summary of thomas

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. 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". This enterprise was not without its problems.

France had a conflicting strategy in the late s to link its colonies from west to east across the continent [ 54 ] and the Portuguese produced the " Pink Map ", [ 55 ] representing their claims to sovereignty in Africa. Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. 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.

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". Furthermore Rhodes saw imperialism as a way to alleviate domestic social problems - "In order to save the 40,, inhabitants of the United 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". Rhodes wanted to develop a Commonwealth in which all of the British-dominated countries in the empire would be represented in the British Parliament. As Rhodes also respected and admired the Germans and their Kaiser , 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. Rhodes's views on race have been debated; he supported the rights of indigenous Africans to vote, [ 63 ] but critics have labelled him as an "architect of apartheid " [ 64 ] and a " white supremacist ", particularly since We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa".

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. 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".

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 a biological or maximal racist. Despite his support for what became the basis for the apartheid system, he is best seen as a cultural or minimal racist ". 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.

And yet he did all these things. On domestic politics within Britain, Rhodes was a supporter of the Liberal Party. 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. Scholar and Zimbabwean author Peter 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. Rhodes never married, pleading, "I have too much work on my hands" and saying that he would not be a dutiful husband.

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. Rhodes' biographers have been divided on the question of his sexuality. John Gilbert Lockhart and C. Woodhouse denied that Rhodes was homosexual, while Stuart Cloete and Antony Thomas took the view that he was asexual.

Robert I. Rotberg and Brian Roberts have asserted that he was homosexual. 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. In reaction, she accused him of loan fraud. He had to go to trial and testify against her accusation. During the Second Boer War Rhodes went to Kimberley at the onset of the siege , 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 Colonel Robert Kekewich , experienced serious personal difficulties with Rhodes because of the latter's inability to co-operate. Despite these differences, Rhodes' company was instrumental in the defence of the city, providing water and refrigeration facilities, constructing fortifications, and manufacturing an armoured train , shells and a one-off gun named Long Cecil.

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 of Bloemfontein and Pretoria , but they were compelled to change their plans and send three separate smaller forces to relieve the sieges of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith.

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 , his health again deteriorated with heart and lung problems, to the extent that his doctor, Sir Morell 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 , aged 48, at his seaside cottage in Muizenberg. The government arranged an epic journey by train from the Cape to Rhodesia, with the funeral 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". Rhodes has been the target of much recent criticism, with some historians attacking him as a ruthless imperialist and white supremacist. In December , Cain Mathema , the governor of Bulawayo, 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.

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-president Robert Mugabe also opposed the move. In the early s 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 before he had accumulated his wealth, Rhodes wanted to create a secret society that would bring the whole world under British rule. His biographer calls it an "extensive fantasy. 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 of Table Mountain to the South African nation.

Part of this estate became the upper campus of the University of Cape Town , another part became the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden , while much was spared from development and is now an important conservation area. South Africa's Rhodes University is named after him. In his last will, he provided for the establishment of the Rhodes 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. Rhodes' aims were to promote leadership marked by public spirit and good character, and to "render war impossible" by promoting friendship between the great powers.

Rhodes Memorial stands on Rhodes's favourite spot on the slopes of Devil's Peak , Cape Town, with a view looking north and east towards the Cape to Cairo route. From to 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. 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. Rhodes University College, now Rhodes University , in Grahamstown , was established in his name by his trustees and founded by Act of Parliament on 31 May The residents of Kimberley, Northern Cape elected to build a memorial in Rhodes's honour in their city, which was unveiled in The 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 their rebellion.

Captivated by the unspoilt and breathtaking beauty of the area, he immediately purchased a parcel of farms totalling 40, ha and then proceeded to import cattle from Mozambique and develop extensive plantations of apple and fruit trees. When he died in , Rhodes bequeathed most of the estate to the nation, and this now forms the Nyanga 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 s, when some Afrikaner students demanded the removal of a Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town. Following a series of protests and vandalism 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 of Rhodes University [ ] and to remove a statue of Rhodes from Oriel College, Oxford. Moreover, an article by Amit Chaudhuri , in The Guardian , suggested the criticism was "unsurprising and overdue". In after the country's independence the statue was removed to the centenary park at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe.

Cecil would not see its end; he died of a heart attack on 26th March , aged just Read about the life of Robert Falcon Scott, most famous perhaps for his failure in the race to the South Pole. Includes photos from the Discovery and Terra Nova expeditions. Share article. Ben Johnson. Cecil Rhodes as a boy When he was only 16, Cecil fell so ill with a suspected case of consumption that he was dispatched to recuperate in the warmer climate of the British South African Cape Colony, there to join his brother Herbert on his cotton farm.

Cecil Rhodes at the age of sixteen The warm African sun appears to have had the desired effect on his health, as Cecil started work for the first time. Related articles. Timeline of the British Empire. The Boer Ultimatum. Rise to Power — Victorians. Rule Britannia. Rudyard Kipling.