Cecil John Rhodes,
South African financier and statesman: b: Bishop's Stortford,
Hertfordshire, England, 5 July 1853; d: Cape Town 26 March 1902. He was
educated at the grammar school of his native town, but before he could
pass on to the university, a serious affection of the lungs
necessitated his departure for Natal, where an elder brother of his was
engaged in cotton-raising. Rhodes landed
in South Africa in 1870 and after a brief experience in farming made
his way to the diamond fields of Kimberley, where he met with speedy
and astonishing success. At 19 he was a millionaire and, with his
health well recovered in the salubrious air of the veldt, he planned to
return to England to resume his interrupted education. Before leaving
South Africa he traveled for eight months, by ox-cart and on foot
through the region north of the Orange and the Vaal, and his
imagination, which even at that early age worked in vast spaces, saw in
the fertile, 'hinly populated country, virgin soil for the building up
of an imperial Britain in the Dark Continent. He matriculated at Baliol
College, Oxford, in 1873, but his ailment returned and he was compelled
to leave England in the same year. Three years in South Africa made him
robust again and from 1876 on he kept his terms at the university,
spending the long vacation in South Africa, and taking his B.A. and
M.A. in 1881. In the same year Rhodes entered
the Cape Parliament as member for Barkly West. By this time his plans
for the future had assumed a definite character. Convinced, at all
times, of the supreme fitness of the English race for the task of
governing the world, Rhodes made it his
object in life to further the .realization of that end in his own
especial sphere of South Africa. To aid him in his schemes he looked to
money, in whose power he had a tremendous faith, and it is because of
the close connection in him of the selfish money-getting instinct and
the broad ambition of the statesman that Rhodes remained for many years an enigma to the world. In the Cape Parliament Rhodes devoted
himself to the task of establishing harmonious relations between the
English inhabitants and the Dutch, for with true insight he recognized
that if British influence was to dominate South Africa it must be conditioned by the
good-will of the people of Dutch blood. The . first step in his scheme
of imperial expansion " was the acquisition of Bechuanaland as a
British protectorate in 1884. For this he labored against the
indifference of the home government, which he finally stirred to action
by his insistence upon the necessity of securing Bechuaualand as an
outlet for the British trade to the north, already threatened by the
encroachments of the Transvaal from the east and Germany from the west.
In 1800 Rhodes became premier of Cape Colony. During his six years of office he gave special attention to his old policy of amalgamation between Dutch and British; he succeeded in winning the confidence of the former by his strong advocacy of full local government for Cape Colony, which he considered quite consistent with, and indeed, essential for, the scheme of imperial federation. It is this belief in a federal union of locally autonomous commonwealths that explains his gift of fio.ooo to the funds of the Irish Home Rule party in 1888. In his treatment of the native races of Cape Colony Rhodes maintained the impossibility of granting them equal rights with the white population, but at the same time held it necessary to protect them by law against the temptations of civilization and exploitation by the whites. In Rhodesia a formidable outbreak of the Matabele in 1893 ended, after a bitter conflict, in their utter defeat and the absorption of their territory by the Chartered Company. Successful . everywhere, however, Rhodes was destined to fall before his old opponent, Kruger, of the Transvaal. The Jameson raid in 1895 destroyed Rhodes' personal power, although subsequent events fully vindicated his policy. Though the full truth of the Jameson affair may not perhaps be known, it is established that Rhodes, who was a large holder of mines in the Rand, plotted with other leaders of the Uitlanders in Johannesburg for the subversion of the Transvaal government; that a revolution was prepared in Johannesburg, and that Rhodes stationed Captain Jameson with several hundred men of the Rhodesian mounted police on the western border of the Transvaal to cooperate when necessary with the leaders in the mining town; and though it is also established that Jameson invaded the Transvaal without Rhodes' orders, the evil results of that unhappy affair may not unjustly be reckoned up against the premier of Cape Colony who abused the powers of his office to plot the downfall of a nation (see Jameson, Leander Starr). A committee of the House of Commons acquitted Rhodes of responsibility for the raid, but censured his conduct as minister and director of the Chartered Company. Rhodes resigned the premiership on the last day of 1895 and thenceforth devoted himself to the interests of Rhodesia. A second war with the Matabele in 1896 was terminated by Rhodes' intrepid courage; the building of the trans-continental railway was rapidly pushed forward, and in connection with this undertaking Rhodes visited Europe in 1898-1900, carrying on negotiations with Mr. Chamberlain, the colonial secretary, and with the German emperor. During the Boer war, in its outcome the triumph and realization of his policy, Rhodes was besieged in Kimberley and took part in its defense. His health, however, gave way, and in spite of a trip to Egypt, his old disease finally conquered. In his lifetime Rhodes was the subject of infinite execration, as well as unlimited applause. Looked upon by different men as a statesman or a land grabber, a builder of empires or an unscrupulous speculator, he was all of these and more; and the anomaly of his character may, perhaps, be best explained if he be regarded as a man of great aims who let nothing stand in the way of their achievement Rhodes left the bulk of his great fortune for the establishment of a large number of scholarships at Oxford University to be apportioned as follows: Rhodesia, 9; Cape Colony, 12; Natal, 3; Australia, 18; New Zealand, 3; Canada, 6; Newfoundland, 3; Bermuda, 3; United States, 2 for each State and territory; Germany, 15. All but the German scholarships have an annual value of £300, and all but the last were intended to bring about that complete unity of the English speaking race whose destiny it is, Rhodes believed, ultimately to rule the world. Consult "Vindex," 'Political Life and Speeches of Cecil Rhodes' (1900) ; "Imperialist," "Cecil Rhodes: a Biography and Appreciation5 (1897) ; Hensman, 'Life of Cecil Rhodes' (1902).
