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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Cecil Rhodes
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(1853–1902)
English-born entrepreneur and politician who made a vast fortune in the newly discovered diamond fields at Kimberley, in *South Africa, where he formed in 1880 the De Beers Mining Company; by 1891 he controlled 90% of the world production of diamonds. Meanwhile he had conceived the ambitious imperial dream of a British colony from the Cape to Cairo. He became a member of the Cape Colony parliament in 1881, and was prime minister by 1890.
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But there was a barrier to expansion in the Boer republic of the Transvaal to the northeast. Rhodes's admitted involvement in the early planning of the *Jameson Raid against the Transvaal led to his resignation as prime minister in 1896. His policy of commercial expansion to the north continued, under the aegis of the British South Africa Company which he had set up in 1889. The large area settled by the company's pioneers was in 1895 formally named Rhodesia (now *Zimbabwe); meanwhile the company was also pressing into the territory further north, which became Northern Rhodesia (now *Zambia).
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Rhodes had been an undergraduate at Oriel College in Oxford. In his will he established the Rhodes Scholarships which enable young men (and more recently women) from the Commonwealth and the United States to study at Oxford.
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