The Colonialist

About The Colonialist By William Kelleher Storey

Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the world's most important diamond mining company, De Beers, as well as a gold-mining concern called Consolidated Gold Fields. While he was a busy entrepreneur, he was also a member of the Cape Colony's legislature and served as prime minister from 1890 to 1896, a key period for the development of racial discrimination. His British South Africa Company was given a charter to govern what is today Zambia and Zimbabwe. His most famous legacy is the Rhodes Trust, which funds the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University.

A complex figure, admired and detested in his own time, Rhodes dreamt to unite Southern Africa's colonies and republics into one state, dominated by white settlers, with labor provided by Black people who were constrained and pressured by discriminatory laws. He built his wealth on the backs of African migrant laborers, for whom he had little regard. His British South Africa Company was accused of fraud. And in 1895 and 1896, he famously encouraged a failed plot to overthrow the independent Boer republic in the Transvaal. Rhodes' coup helped to precipitate the South African War, which started in 1899 and ended in 1902, the year of Rhodes' death.