Cecil+John+Rhodes

Cecil John Rhodes, born July 5th 1853, was a British businessman, powerful mining executive, and well known South African politician. Rhodes is widely known for his founding of a territory previously known as Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe), and his partnership with universities such as Oxford, for his creation of the “Rhodes Scholarship.”

At the age of thirteen, Rhodes was sent by his father to live with his brother Herbert, who at the time was attempting to start up a cotton farm in Natal, South Africa. Seeing that the farm wasn’t at all successful, Cecil and Herbert closed up shop and moved to a new area called Kimberely. Kimberely was known for its new mining fields, inspiring Rhodes to become a diamond prospector. Although business was slow at first, things started to pick up, making Cecil Rhodes incredibly wealthy by the time he reached twenty years old.

With all the money Rhodes earned, he decided he should provide himself with a better education. He began to attend Oxford University in 1873. By then, the young man had his own mining company called De Beers, and was in control of much of the mining area near Kimberely. Upon receiving his degree from Oxford in 1881, Rhodes began his career in politics and entered the Cape Colony Parliament.

Cecil John Rhodes contributed a fair portion of his life to politics. In 1885, he convinced the British to takeover the area now known as Botswana to prevent the Boers from expanding their territory northward. Being a strong believer in British colonization, Rhodes wanted the British to control nearly every aspect of South Africa. The Boers were viewed as just another threat to his overall vision.

A couple years later, Rhodes was in charge of all the mining rights to Matabeleland (later named Rhodesia), which later gave him access to the position of the Head Administrator of British South Africa,which also gave him control of Zambia and the northern expansion of British territory. Shortly after, Rhodes was also named Prime Minister of the Cape Region. He used this new source of power to try to push the idea of total British takeover. He later took part in an event called the “Jameson Raid”, in which a group of British settlers attempted to overthrow the Boers government. The plan failed, costing Rhodes his position as Prime Minister.

Cecil John Rhodes died on March 26, 1902 after taking part in the Boers War. He donated his wealth to Oxford University to help benefit new coming students in the form of scholarships. Although lots of Rhodes’s history seemed based off of pure British greed, he still is responsible for kick- starting years of South African success. As Historian Richard A. McFarlan puts it, “//Cecil John Rhodes is// //as integral a participant in southern African and British imperial history as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln are in their respective eras in United States history.” //