© Getty Images

Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) -

Cecil John Rhodes was born on July 5, 1853, in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, in England.

© Public Domain

Life in Africa -

Prone to ill health for much of his adolescence, Rhodes was eventually dispatched to southern Africa by his father, where it was hoped the warmer climate would provide respite from the asthma affecting his lungs.

© Public Domain

Arrival in Kimberley -

Arriving in South Africa in 1870, Rhodes joined his brother Herbert on his cotton farm in the Umkomaas valley in Natal. However, the farm was not a success and the following year the siblings left Natal for the diamond fields of Kimberley in Northern Cape Province.

© Getty Images

Diamond magnate -

While Herbert's interests in diamonds soon waned, Cecil succeeded over the next 17 years in buying up all the smaller diamond mining operations in the Kimberley area.

© Getty Images

De Beers Mining Company -

Rhodes was able to do this after establishing the De Beers Mining Company in 1880 with his business partner, Charles Rudd (pictured).

© Public Domain

Kimberley Central Diamond Mining Company -

In 1887 with help from Anglo-German gold and diamond magnate Alfred Beit (pictured), Rhodes set about acquiring the Kimberley Central Diamond Mining Company.

© Getty Images

De Beers Consolidated Mines -

The following year, Rhodes and Rudd launched De Beers Consolidated Mines after the amalgamation of a number of individual claims, with Rhodes named as chairman. By 1891, De Beers owned 90% of the world's production of diamonds.

© Getty Images

Studies in England -

While consolidating his business interests in Kimberley, Cecil Rhodes found time to study at university in England.

© Getty Images

Oriel College, Oxford -

He was admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term in 1874, choosing to return to South Africa. He resumed his studies in 1876, and took a belated degree in 1881.

© Getty Images

Imperialist philosophy -

It was at Oxford that Rhodes began to acquire his exalted view of the merits of British civilization. He cultivated a philosophy of an almost mystical imperialism where the entire world fell under British rule. "I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race," he once said.

© Getty Images

Promoting British rule -

Having amassed enormous wealth, Rhodes returned to Kimberley and began to consider ways of using his fortune to extend British rule in the region. Entering politics was the answer.

© Getty Images

Rhodes the politician -

Cecil Rhodes was elected a member of the Cape Parliament in 1881. He immediately began intervening in native African policy, the goal being the development of British imperial influence.

© Public Domain

A new British Empire -

Rhodes' idea was to create a British Empire in new territories to the north by obtaining mineral concessions from the most powerful Indigenous chiefs.

© Getty Images

Cape to Cairo Railway -

One of his more outlandish proposals was to establish a Cape to Cairo railway line, symbolic of a continuous "red line" of British dominions from north to south.

© Public Domain

Rhodesia is born -

To that end, in 1889 Rhodes obtained a charter from the British Government for his British South Africa Company (BSAC) to rule, police, and make new treaties and concessions. Rhodes' expansionist policies saw the BSAC take control of regions north and south of the Zambezi River: the new territories were eventually called by his name— Northern Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

© Getty Images

Groote Schuur -

In 1890, Cecil Rhodes was elected Prime Minister of Cape Colony. He acquired a property called Groote Schuur, where he entertained Dutch and British residents of the colony and eminent visitors of all nationalities.

© Public Domain

Kruger and the Transvaal -

Despite his success in establishing lands as British protectorates, Rhodes did not have direct political power over the independent Boer Republic of the Transvaal. Nor did he have access to the territory, governed with an iron fist by Paul Kruger (pictured).

© Getty Images

Leander Starr Jameson -

Relations between Rhodes and Kruger soured to the point where BSAC administrator Leander Starr Jameson assembled a private army outside the Transvaal in preparation for the violent overthrow of the Boer government.

© Getty Images

Jameson Raid -

On December 29, 1895, what became known as the Jameson Raid took place. The idea was to make a dash for Johannesburg and encourage the disenfranchised Uitlanders (foreign workers) of the Boer republics to resist Afrikaner domination and stoke rebellion. But Boer forces, led by General Piet Joubert (pictured), proved a far greater foe than the British had anticipated.  

© Getty Images

Fiasco and arrest of Frank Rhodes -

The raid was a fiasco. Jameson's forces were overrun and eventually imprisoned. Ironically, one of those rounded up was Frank Rhodes, another brother of Cecil's. He'd been sympathetic of the Uitlander population living in Transvaal and was later tried for high treason and also put behind bars. He was released on payment of a heavy fine.

© Public Domain

Rhodes resigns as PM -

In the wake of the Jameson debacle, Cecil Rhodes resigned as prime minister and relinquished most of his offices.

© Getty Images

Second Matabele War -

In March 1896, the Second Matabele War broke out. It pitted the BSAC against the Matabele people, which led to conflict with the Shona people in the rest of Southern Rhodesia. Along with the Jameson Raid, the Second Matabele War led indirectly to the Second Boer War, which commenced in October 1899.

© Getty Images

Siege of Kimberley (1899–1900) -

The siege of Kimberley took place during the Boer War. Rhodes, who still controlled all the mining activities, moved back into the town and was instrumental in organizing its defense, despite him being seen as one of the primary protagonists behind war breaking out in the first place. He's pictured with Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener.

© Getty Images

Death of Rhodes -

Rhodes spent the rest of his life promoting developments in the north. But his last last years were soured by an unfortunate relationship with an aristocratic adventuress, Princess Catherine Radziwill. Poor health prompted the return of a serious heart condition and he died in Cape Town on March 26, 1902. He was 48 years old.

© Public Domain

Burial and controversy -

Cecil Rhodes was laid to rest at his request at Malindidzimu, a sacred hilltop located south of Bulawayo, in what was then Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). Calls for his remains to be repatriated to Great Britain have persisted since 2012, with the site seen as representing colonial triumph and conquest over Indigenous Africans.

© Shutterstock

Removal of statues -

Earlier, a statue of Rhodes erected in Bulawayo in 1904 was moved after Zimbabwe's independence in 1981 and relocated to grounds set within the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe.

© Getty Images

Rhodes Must Fall -

The actions of Rhodes and his BSAC forever changed the face of Southern Africa and the lives of its inhabitants. But he's often been called the architect of apartheid for his disregard for the rights of the people already living on the lands that he claimed. On March 9, 2015, a protest movement, Rhodes Must Fall, successfully campaigned for the removal of a statue of Rhodes erected outside the University of Cape Town.

© Getty Images

Debate in Oxford -

In Oxford, students and the wider public demanded Oriel College remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes fronting the building above the door.

© Getty Images

Voicing their disapproval -

Demonstrators gathered outside the college in June 2020 calling for its dismantling, with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign stating that awareness should be raised at the university about the institution's implication in colonialism and the violence that accompanied it, and that representation of "black voices" should be improved.

© Getty Images

Face of colonialism -

Similar calls were made for the removal of a plaque dedicated to the mining magnate and politician in King Edward Street, adjacent to the college.

© Getty Images

Rhodes Scholarship -

This is despite the fact that in his will, Cecil Rhodes provided for the establishment of the Rhodes Scholarship, an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford and one of the most prestigious of its kind in the world.

© Shutterstock

Incompatible with an inclusive culture -

Meanwhile back in South Africa, a bronze bust of Cecil Rhodes set within the Rhodes Memorial on Devil's Peak in Cape Town was decapitated in July 2020, thought to be a result of the controversy and protests against legacies of colonialism and imperialism.

Sources: (Heritage History) (BBC) (Rhodes House) 

See also: What is the African Union and why is it important?

© Shutterstock