Today we will continue the story started in the article Cecil Rhodes: the real but "wrong" hero of Britain and South Africa.
Rhodes' fate can rightfully be called amazing and even astounding. From childhood, the son of a provincial English vicar, who had health problems, came to Africa at the age of 17. At the age of 35, he already created the famous De Beers company. At the age of 36, he became one of the founders of the powerful British South African Company. At 37, Rhodes is already a knight, a member of the House of Lords and the Privy Council of the British Empire, and the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. He wages wars and concludes treaties, builds cities and roads, plants gardens, establishes trade relations and organizes production. And still finds time to study at Oxford. He dies before he reaches the age of 49, being officially recognized as the richest and most influential man in Africa. Assessing his activity, he repeats before death:
"There is so much to be done, and how little has been done."
The first years of the hero's life
Cecil Rhodes was born in 1853 in Hertfordshire, from where he moved to the South African province of Natal in 1870. His elder brother Herbert tried to grow cotton here.
With cotton, things went wrong, and in 1871 the brothers moved to the provincial town of Kimberley (Cynburgh-leah - literally "Women who have the right to own land"). It was then here, on a farm owned by brothers Johannes and Diederik de Beer, that the first diamonds were found.
Diamond Rush
Very soon the name Kimberly will become known all over the world, and much of the credit for this belongs to Cecil Rhodes. In 1882, Kimberley, by the way, became the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to have electric lighting.
It all began with the fact that in 1866 the trader and hunter John O'Relley ended up on the farm of the Dutch settler Van-Nickerk, which was located near Hopetown on the banks of the Vaal River. Here he drew attention to a yellowish stone, similar to a piece of glass, with which Nikerk's son was playing. The boy's father gave this stone away for free, saying: "".
It turned out that this is a diamond weighing 21, 25 carats, it was given the name "Eureka". In Cape Town, the stone was sold for the equivalent of 3 thousand dollars, half of this money O'Relly honestly gave to Van-Nikerk. After a series of resales in Europe, the price of this diamond has increased significantly. But the next find became the main sensation. The same Van-Niekerk exchanged all his horses and sheep for a stone shown to him by a local sorcerer-kaffir. It was the Star of South Africa diamond weighing 83 carats. Nikerk then sold it for $ 56,000.
Crowds of adventurers rushed to South Africa and at first they found diamonds even in the mud on the streets of Kimberley.
And then these prospectors manually dug the striking Big Hole quarry ("Big hole" - depth 240 m, width - 463 m), which was developed until 1914.
Diamonds with a total weight of 14.5 million carats were mined here. The largest of them weighed 428.5 carats and was named De Beers.
Cecil Rhodes, who came here because the local climate was considered curative for patients with bronchial asthma, realized that his place was not on the farm. Despite his illness, Rhodes was not at all a "armchair businessman." He traveled a lot through undeveloped lands and personally negotiated with the not always peaceful leaders of local tribes.
Towards De Beers
After moving to Kimberley, Cecil's older brother, Herbert Rhodes, took up the arms trade, which he sold to local tribes, for which he later ended up in a Portuguese prison. And Rhodes initially rented out various mining equipment, such as pumps for pumping water, winches for lifting mined rock to the surface, and so on. Then he began to actively buy up small mines in the vicinity of Kimberley and succeeded so much that in 1873 he could afford, entrusting business to his partner Charles Rudd, to go to England.
Here Rhodes enrolled in Oriel College, Oxford University.
“What Alexander the Great did not do, I will do,” he once said then.
Business constantly forced him to leave for Africa, and he managed to get a diploma only in 1881. However, he did not forget about his university, leaving him a huge amount of 7 million pounds sterling at that time. The Rhodes Charitable Foundation still pays scholarships to students and teachers of Oriel College, which, as we recall from the previous article, does not stop them from insulting the benefactor and seeking the dismantling of his statue.
In Britain, Rhodes joined the Apollo Masonic lodge and established contacts with representatives of the Rothschild trading house, with the loans of which he eventually bought up almost all the mines near Kimberley. Among them was the famous mine of the de Beer brothers' site. It was she who gave the name to the new company that Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd founded in 1888 - De Beers Consolidated Mining Limited. At this time he was only 35 years old.
After 15 years, De Beers controlled 95 percent of the world's diamond production. Moreover, many believe that it is thanks to Cecil Rhodes's clever advertising campaign that diamonds have acquired the modern status of jewelry for the rich, becoming a symbol of the "beautiful" luxurious life.
By the way, Rhodes holds a fantastic record for the amount of one drawn check. 5,338,650 pounds (more than $ 2 billion at current exchange rates) was paid to them for the purchase of the Kimberley Central Diamond Company. Rhodes also invested in diamond mining in India.
Then Rhodes founded the largest gold mining company in South Africa (Gold Fields of South Africa), for which he had to buy 8 gold-bearing areas near Johannesburg - in the territory owned by the Boers. This company controlled a third of the gold mining and made more money at the time than the Kimberley diamond mines.
British South African Company
And in 1889, Rhodes, together with Alfred Bate and the Duke of Abercorn, founded the British South African Company (BJAC).
Representatives of this company managed to obtain from Lobengula, the leader of the Ndebele tribe, a concession for the right to develop subsoil.
Very soon Lobengula changed his mind and even sent a complaint to London. Do not think that this leader was trying to "save his tribe from a cruel colonizer": he was trying to beat out the best conditions for himself. But Rhodes' influence was already too great. And the imperial authorities worried about the problems of the native leaders no more than the notorious "sheriff" from the saying. Queen Victoria signed a charter that gave BUAC the right to govern territories from the Limpopo River to the great lakes of Central Africa. Moreover, the company received the right to create military and police units, and already on its own behalf, conclude new contracts and concessions.
“There is a clear answer to every question:
We have maxim, they don't have it."
Rhodes quickly expanded the territory that BUAC controlled north of the Zambezi River (by signing a concession with the ruler of Levaniki). After signing an agreement with Kpzembe, the lands around Lake Mveru also fell into the sphere of influence of his company. But he failed to achieve annexation of the territory of Bechuanaland (Botswana), conquered in 1885, to his possessions: the leaders of local tribes achieved the status of a British protectorate for their lands.
Please note that the British have always sought to formalize their acquisitions, concluding contracts with the leaders of the native lands, or transferring them to the management of the imperial officials. And in the event of the outbreak of hostilities, they did not hesitate to conclude full-fledged peace treaties upon their completion - exactly the same as with European monarchs. Local rulers did not move, but these treaties determined their status and powers. The British acted especially subtly in India, where each Rajah was entitled to strictly defined privileges and honors - up to the number of saluting salute guns agreed upon once and for all. And the British observed their part of the obligations under these unequal and only beneficial treaties very carefully. That is, from the point of view of the British, they acted absolutely legally on the territory of their colonies. And they were very indignant, they severely punished the natives if they, realizing the deception, violated the agreement signed by them.
By the end of his life, Rhodes controlled a land area of two hundred ninety one thousand square miles. This is more of the territories of France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland combined. In addition to Rhodesia, these were the lands of Bechuanaland, Nyasaland and even modern Uganda.
The British High Commissioner here was actually only Cecil Rhodes' secretary. Eyewitnesses recount one of Rhodes's conversations with Queen Victoria of Great Britain:
“- What have you been doing, Mr. Rhodes, since we last saw each other?
“I have added two provinces to Your Majesty's domain.
"I wish some of my ministers did the same, who, on the contrary, manage to lose my provinces."
Rhodes' dream was the unification under British rule of the belt of lands "from Cairo to Cape Town" - no more, no less.
Cecil Rhodes wrote then:
“What a pity that we cannot reach the stars shining above us at night in the sky! I would annex planets if I could; I often think about it. I am sad to see them so clear and at the same time so distant."
Cecil Rhodes' Contribution to the Development of Agriculture in Modern South Africa
Among other things, Cecil Rhodes also became the founder of the current South African fruit industry. In the 1880s. in the vicinity of Cape Town, vineyards affected by phylloxera perished. Cecil Rhodes bought many farms, refocusing them on the production of fruits that were exported to Europe. To do this, he had to equip refrigerators in the holds of the purchased ships. It is curious that along with seeds and seedlings, birds were then brought to South Africa to fight insect pests. And back in 1894, by order of Rhodes, Angora goats were brought from the Ottoman Empire to South Africa.
Cecil Rhodes' personal life
Cecil Rhodes was unmarried, claiming that he could not afford a family relationship due to extreme employment. Detractors accused him of having a homosexual relationship with personal secretary Neville Pickering. And Ekaterina Radziwill, nee Countess Rzhevskaya, who came to South Africa in 1900, claimed that she was engaged to Rhodes. By the way, she became the heroine of one of V. Pikul's stories ("The Lady from the Gothic Almanac").
However, the court found the Polish woman a fraud, documents signed by Rhodes were found to be fake, the adventurer herself was sentenced to a year in prison.
Cecil Rhodes' political ambitions
Rhodes was a supporter of the Liberal Party and did not forget about big politics. At the age of 27, he was already a member of parliament. At the age of 37 - a knight, a member of the House of Lords and the Privy Council of the British Empire, he was elected Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, annexed in 1806 by the British from Holland.
Cecil Rhodes vs. Orange Republic and Transvaal
Rhodes' political career was ruined by an attempt to independently capture the Transvaal and the Orange Republic. The British authorities were outraged not by this military adventure, but by its failure. As you know, winners are not judged. But they don't stand on ceremony with the defeated.
In 1895 g. Rhodes sent a detachment of British colonial official Linder Jameson (more than 500 people) to Johannesburg. Jameson was to overthrow the President of the Transvaal Republic - Paul Kruger. According to Rhodes' plan, numerous English workers were to support the British in this city. And then they should have turned to the official British authorities for help, presenting what was happening as a "revolt of peaceful colonists." However, the Boers learned about this campaign in time: Jameson's detachment was surrounded and defeated, many British were taken prisoner.
In 1896, Rhodes was forced to resign, but continued to use his influence to fuel anti-Boer sentiments in both Britain and South Africa. Largely thanks to his efforts, the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 began, which ended with the victory of Great Britain and the annexation of the Orange Republic and the Transvaal. However, once in the course of this war, Rhodes, at the head of a small detachment, had to defend the besieged Kimberley by the Boers.
And this is the young W. Churchill, who was captured, but managed to escape, and the Boer announcement of a reward (as much as 25 pounds) for his capture:
Before the signing of the peace treaty, Rhodes did not live, he died two months before the victory - on March 26, 1902. At the time of his death, Cecil Rhodes was not even 49 years old. Almost the entire population of Kimberley came to say goodbye to him. A grand farewell to Rhodes' body was also organized in Cape Town.
And Rhodes was buried in the Matobo mountains on the territory of modern Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) - on a granite rock, which he once called "View of the World". The train with Rhodes' body had to stop at every station, since there were people everywhere who wanted to pay respect to his ashes. And already in Matobo, the natives of the Ndebele tribe at the burial gave Rhodes "royal" honors - "bayte" (Rhodes became the first white man to be given such an honor). It can be concluded that the aborigines themselves Cecil Rhodes were not considered a villain and an oppressor at that time.
In December 2010 the Governor of Bulawayo City with the speaking name Cain Matema named Rhodes' grave "" and stated that it brings Zimbabwe bad weather and bad weather. His words were not forgotten, and when the country suffered a drought in 2013, nationalists urged President Mugabe to open Rhodes' grave and send his ashes to the UK. To the credit of the authorities of this country, they did not support this initiative. And the remains of Cecil Rhodes still rest in the land of the country that once bore his name.
And the Rhodes memorial was created in Cape Town on the slope of Table Mountain (near Devil's Peak) in 1912.
Rhodes' statue here has already been destroyed twice by vandals:
De Beers after the death of Cecil Rhodes
Founded by Rhodes, De Beers merged with Anglo-American, led by Ernst Oppenheimer, in the mid-1920s. It was he who became the chairman of its board in 1927. Throughout the twentieth century, De Beers effectively controlled the diamond market, keeping prices on them at the level it needed. It is curious that this policy was beneficial to other diamond producers, as prices were predictable and kept at a high level, which guaranteed stable operation of the enterprises. But at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Oppenheimer, Ernst's grandson, insisted on a new development strategy. De Beers then abandoned its policy of buying up surplus diamonds and holding down their prices. However, in 2018, De Beers sold 33.7 million carats of rough diamonds worth $ 5.4 billion. The Russian company Alrosa sold diamonds worth $ 4.507 billion in the same year.
