Son of an English clergyman, a sickly Rhodes is sent to South Africa in 1870 at age seventeen. He settles in Kimberly and works on his brother’s diamond mines until 1873 when he returns to the UK to complete his education at Oxford. His vision by then is of a vast colonial empire running down the eastern half of Africa from Egypt down to Capetown. He and his partner, Charles Rudd, purchase the DeBeer’s claim in Kimberly which provides a “corner” on diamonds and control over supplies and pricing. He becomes the voice of Britain in Africa and becomes Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in 1890. As such he is a white supremacist whose apartheid beliefs regard the inferior Blacks as a labor resource. But his attempt to conquer the Transvaal fails in 1895 and leads on to the costly Boer War of 1898. His health is failing while still pursuing his dream of a Kimberly to Cairo RR. He is only 48 years old when he dies in 1902. He never marries and leaves the bulk of his vast fortune to Oxford University.
Cecil Rhodes
