Cecil John Rhodes

South Africa

Arriving in Durban on 1 September 1870, Rhodes lived on money lent to him by Sophia, who had also helped pay for his passage. His brother Herbert informed him via letter that he had left for the diamond fields in the country's interior. Awaiting his brother's return, Rhodes would briefly stay with the Surveyor-General of Natal, Peter Cormac Sutherland, in Pietermaritzburg. From there, he went out to inspect his brother's cotton farm in the Umkomazi valley and found it to be in a state of disrepair, contrary to Herbert's reports to their aunt. By mid-October, Herbert had returned; in recognition of Rhodes' help by bringing new seeds, clearing acres of dense bush, and planting the new crop, he agreed to share the land and profits. Rhodes was often left to run the farm himself, as Herbert would leave for horse-racing and cricket matches in Pietermaritzburg and Richmond. In March 1871, Herbert abandoned the farm once again in favour of the diamond fields, taking the best oxen with him. Without them, the cotton harvest was underwhelming and Rhodes was forced to sell his harvest at well-below expected price.

In May 1871, diamonds were found at the Vooruitzigt farm, which was owned by Johannese Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus. Diamond miners quickly swarmed the site, and by October 1871, an eighteen year old Rhodes would abandon the farm and join his brother at the diamond fields of Kimberley. Here he would supervise the working of his brother's claims and speculated on his behalf, as Herbert had departed for England two weeks after Rhodes' arrival. In January 1872, he had returned to the mining camps with their brother Frank. It was during this time that he met John X. Merriman and Charles Rudd, who would later became his partner in the De Beers Mining Company and the Niger Oil Company.

In July of that year, Rhodes suffered his first heart attack, and could not help dig for almost eight months. When he recovered enough to travel, his brothers took him on a long northbound journey by ox-wagon, both to aid Rhodes' health, and to pursue news of gold discovered in the general area. On this journey, Rhodes would also purchase a 3000-acre farm in the Transvaal, which qualified him for voting rights in the Boer republic. By the time they reached their destination at Marabastad, the gold was already washed out, but there were rumours of more gold discovered in the eastern Transvaal. Herbert accordingly sold his diamond claims to Cecil and left to mine gold; the two never saw each other again.

Oxford

In July 1873, Rhodes and his brother Frank left South Africa and sailed for England. There, Rhodes was admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term. On 1 November 1873, his mother died and he left to attend the funeral. Soon after his return to Oxford, he caught a severe chill while rowing and the doctors recommended he immediately return to the hot dry climate of Kimberley. By January 1874, he was back in South Africa and would not return to Oxford until 1876.

Among Rhodes' Oxford associates were James Rochfort Maguire, later a fellow of All Souls College and a director of the British South Africa Company, and Charles Metcalfe. Due to his university career, Rhodes admired the Oxford tutorial system and was eventually inspired to develop his scholarship scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye—except in science—an Oxford man is at the top of the tree".

Rhodes is said to have been greatly affected by John Ruskin's inaugural lecture at Oxford, which expounded upon the responsibility of the British to rule as a guiding light of civilization, and went so far as to own a longhand copy of the speech. While attending Oriel College, Rhodes became a Freemason in June 1877 and was initiated into the Apollo University Lodge. Though he found their rituals to be frivolous, he continued to be a South African Freemason until his death in 1902. Rhodes would later write of creating a new secret society that worked to advance British interests and rules.

Diamonds and the establishment of De Beers

During his years 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). After purchasing the land in 1839 from David Danser, a Koranna chief in the area, David Stephanus Fourie, the predecessor to Claudine Fourie-Grosvenor, had allowed the de Beers and various other Afrikaner families to cultivate the land. This region extended from the Modder River via the Vet River up to the Vaal River.

In 1874 and 1875, the diamond fields fell into depression, but Rhodes and Rudd were among those who stayed to consolidate their interests. They believed numerous diamonds could be found in the hard blue ground that had been exposed after the softer, yellow layer near the surface had been worked away. At the same time, the question on how to remove all the water flooding the mines became more pressing; Rhodes and Rudd were able to obtain a contract to pump water out of the three main mines. Upon Rhodes' return from his first term at Oxford, he lived with Robert Dundas Graham, who later became a mining partner with Rudd and Rhodes.

On 13 March 1888, Rhodes and Rudd launched De Beers Consolidated Mines after the amalgamation of several individual claims and with the funding of N.M. Rothschild & Sons. With £200,000 of capital, or $28.5 million today, the company owned the largest interest in the mine. Rhodes was named secretary and chairman of De Beers at the company's founding in 1888. Financed by N M Rothschild & Sons, Rhodes and his brother spent the next seventeen years buying up all the smaller diamond mining operations in the Kimberley area, and in 1890, their monopoly over the world's diamond supply would be sealed through a strategic partnership with the London-based Diamond Syndicate; all parties agreed to maintain high prices.

During the 1880s, Cape vineyards were devastated by a phylloxera epidemic and the diseased vineyards had to be dug up and replanted, leading farmers to seek alternatives to wine. In 1892, Rhodes financed The Pioneer Fruit Growing Company at Nooitgedacht, a venture created by Harry Pickstone, an Englishman with growing fruit in California.

Meanwhile, the shipping magnate Percy Molteno had just undertaken the first successful refrigerated export to Europe. In 1896, after consulting with Molteno, Rhodes began to pay more attention to export fruit farming and bought farms in Groot Drakenstein, Wellington and Stellenbosch. A year later, he bought Rhone and Boschendal and commissioned Sir Herbert Baker to build him a cottage there. The successful operation soon expanded into Rhodes Fruit Farms, and formed a cornerstone of the modern-day Cape fruit industry.

Political views

Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. In what he described as "a draft of some of my ideas" written in 1877 while a student at Oxford, Rhodes said of the English, "I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. 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." Rhodes bemoaned that there was little land left to conquer and said "to think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. 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 40,000,000 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. Rhodes explicitly stipulated in his will that all races should be eligible for the scholarships. However, while "many nonwhite students have benefited from the scholarships, it is doubtful that such 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 “civilized.” But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming “civilized” as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing.".

It is said that he wanted to develop an American elite of philosopher-kings who would have the United States rejoin the British Empire. As Rhodes also respected and admired the Germans and their Kaiser, Wilhelm II, 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, but critics have labelled him as an "architect of apartheid" and a "white supremacist", particularly since 2015. According to Magubane, Rhodes was "unhappy that in many Cape Constituencies, Africans could be decisive if more of them exercised this right to vote under current law [referring to the Cape Qualified Franchise]," with Rhodes arguing that "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa". Rhodes advocated the governance of indigenous Africans living in the Cape Colony "in a state of barbarism and communal tenure" as "a subject race. 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". He thought that those lands which were occupied by the "most despicable specimens of human beings" should be inhabited by Anglo-Saxons.

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". In a 2016 opinion piece for The Times, Oxford University professor Nigel Biggar argued that although Rhodes was a committed imperialist, the charges of racism against him are unfounded. In a 2021 article, Biggar further argued that:

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. Nor would he have stipulated in his final will of July 1899 that the scholarships that would famously bear his name should be awarded without regard for "race". And yet he did all these things.

On domestic politics within Britain, Rhodes was a supporter of the Liberal Party. Rhodes's only major impact was his large-scale support of the Irish nationalist party, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891).

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. He was a friend of Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Afrikaner Bond, and it was largely because of Afrikaner support that he became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Rhodes advocated greater self-government for the Cape Colony, in line with his preference for the empire to be controlled by local settlers and politicians rather than by London.

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. [...] 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."