Sent abroad for his health, Cecil Rhodes came to control the world's diamonds
In 1870 a sickly 16-year-old vicar's son was shipped to South Africa in the hope that sea air and sunshine might spare him tuberculosis. Within two decades Cecil Rhodes controlled nearly all the world's diamond supply through De Beers, ran the Cape Colony as prime minister, and had a vast territory named after him.
Rhodes was born in 1853 in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, a son of a vicar known for never preaching longer than ten minutes. Unlike his elder brothers, he went to the local grammar school rather than a famous public school. In Natal he found his brother Herbert's cotton farm run down, cleared bush and planted a crop himself, only to see Herbert leave for the diamond fields with the best oxen. After diamonds turned up on the de Beer brothers' farm in 1871, the 18-year-old followed him to Kimberley. He suffered his first heart attack the next year, aged 19.
He studied at Oriel College, Oxford, in stretches between trips back to Kimberley, where he and his partner Charles Rudd bought claims at the old De Beers mine and won a contract to pump water from flooded pits. Oxford left a deep mark: he admired its tutorials and was stirred by John Ruskin's lecture on Britain's duty to rule. On 13 March 1888, with backing from N. M. Rothschild and Sons, he launched De Beers Consolidated Mines, and a 1890 agreement with a London syndicate locked in high prices.
Entering the Cape Parliament at 27 in 1881, he became prime minister in 1890. His Glen Grey Act took land from black Africans, and his franchise law tripled the property qualification for voting, effectively excluding black voters. His British South Africa Company created Rhodesia, named for him in 1895 and now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and he dreamed of a Cape to Cairo railway. The failed Jameson Raid on the Transvaal forced his resignation in 1896.
He died in 1902 and was buried at Malindidzimu in present-day Zimbabwe. His will created the Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, the oldest international graduate scholarship. Campaigns such as Rhodes Must Fall now highlight his land seizures and his promotion of false claims that Great Zimbabwe had European builders.
Source: Cecil Rhodes
