Greetings! Given the recent protests involving statues as well as the memory of both these figures, it seems rather fitting that such a question be asked as to why these two men (among others of course), have been targeted in both the UK and abroad recently. There is no lack of coverage from the press about either of them too: see here for an article by the BBC on Colston, and here for an older one on Rhodes). For this response however, let us shift away from the media for a bit and immerse ourselves into what the historical literature has to say on Cecil John Rhodes. I regret that I have neither the information nor the access to sources to detail Edward Colston's life and legacy, so perhaps another contributor with either of those at hand can weigh in as well here. Let us begin.
Note: This comment shall be filled with a fair bit of rhetoric and prose, for which I somewhat apologise in advance, but I find it a rather engaging way to detail a contentious historical figure.
Beginnings
"We are met here to-day to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Cecil Rhodes, one of the greatest men of the Victorian age."
- Violet Georgina Milner, Viscountess Milner, May 14th, 1953.
Cecil John Rhodes was born on the 5th of July, 1853 in the unassuming and small town of Bishop's Stortford, to a family with no high social standing, massive wealth, or considerable prestige in the political scene. At the age of seventeen, apparently for health reasons, he was sent to the British colony of Natal in South-eastern Africa, soon to become the setting for much colonial debacle in Whitehall. There he joined his brother Herbert, who had taken up cotton farming in the Richmond. But far from the cotton fields, it would be the diamond mines of Kimberly which would elevate Rhodes from another hopeful British immigrant to a household name in South Africa and the British Empire. After moving with his brother there in 1872, the young Rhodes set about making his fortune in the diamond mines, and earned enough the following year to afford a tuition at Oriel College, Oxford. Curiously, even his undergraduate years were spent in between lectures and the diamond mines, visiting his claims (as they were called, basically the plots of ground belonging to an individual) in between Terms. It was at Oxford that Rhodes heard the lectures of John Ruskin, who was a leading Victorian art critic (and at the time, Slade Professor of Art). Ruskin was a vocal imperialist, and advocated for the expansion of the British Empire further than it had already reached:
"This is what England must do or perish...She must found Colonies [sic] as fast as she can and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and worthiest men, seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground that she can set her foot on and there teaching her Colonists that their chief aim is to advance the power of England by land and sea."
To Rhodes, who had witnessed firsthand and experienced the untapped potential of the South African lands, he believed that the only remaining place for England to expand as such was in the Cape. At the time, the Cape Colony was seen as a drag on British imperial affairs. The period of 1848-1852 had been marred by constant warfare against the trekboers and Afrikaner tribes, and whilst Rhodes had been at Oxford, the British had signed the Pretoria Convention of 1881, acknowledging the status quo of the independent South African Republic, which occupied the Transvaal (the inner hinterlands of South Africa). To Rhodes as well as other notable imperialists in the Cape Colony government, the Transvaal would be the next area of expansion in the Cape for Britain's empire. Imperial historian John Darwin on the significance of Kimberley in relation to imperialist ambitions:
"This jerry-built outpost of colonial South Africa had become a commercial dynamo. It was a magnet for capital and enterprise and the natural springboard for the penetration of the northern interior by traders, prospectors, speculators, and lang-hungry settlers. It was the forward base of sub-imperialism."
Rhodes was by no means the first such person to dream of a 'United Cape Colony' under Britain. His predecessor in the field (or rather, the veld, to use the appropriate South African geography), had been Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had provided the means to annex the South African Republic (recognised then as the Transvaal Colony) in 1877, before military defeat in 1881. With somewhat perfect timing, it would be just six weeks after the disastrous Battle of Majuba Hill (a decisive victory for the Boers on February 27th, 1881), that Rhodes entered the Cape Colony parliament. Rhodes was one among many "men on the spot" in the Cape Colony who had a colonial stalemate on their hands. However, his work in the parliament, as well as his financial activities in Kimberley, would soon make him the man on the spot.
Rise
"Under new Kimberley management, Cape Colony would throw off its rustic myopia and become the head and center of a unified British South Africa."
- John Darwin
As Rhodes began familiarising himself with the intricacies of the Cape Colony government, his financial activities propelled him to even greater prestige. In 1888, alongside his financial partner Alfred Beit, Rhodes centralised all diamond mining and production from the Cape within a single merger: De Beers Consolidated. A monopoly on diamond mining within the Cape followed suit, and De Beers provided the money with which Rhodes and his partners could finance their "private-imperialism". In the same year as the merger, Rhodes and another partner (one Charles Rudd), persuaded the Southern Ndebele ruler Lobengula to grant the exclusive right to prospect for minerals in his kingdom (Matabeleland). Known as the Rudd Concession, it was largely paid for in rifles, and was a major step in Rhodes' rise to dominance over the Cape.
What exactly was Rhodes' vision with all this economic manoeuvring and influence-gathering? The answer: nothing less than a unified Cape with unquestionable control over the interior hinterlands stretching from Cape Town in the South, to Kimberley as the nerve center, and all the way to Zambezia in the north (then part of Portuguese Mozambique). To do so however, he required a Charter, to gain the promise of government support in the face of any opposition, and to secure the agency of political control over what territory his agents expanded into. In 1889, he received this Charter, forming the infamous British South Africa Company, which would become synonymous with Rhodes and British imperialism across the African continent in due time.
Part 1 of 3