were forced to seek employment at white-owned mines and plantations. Repeatedly in his speeches Rhodes said that whites “are to be lords over them…The native is to be treated as a child.” He supported a law that permitted employers to flog their non-white laborers. As a young man he wrote back to his mother about how delightful it was to possess “land of your own, horses of your own, and shooting when you like and a lot of black niggers to do what you like with.”23
In 1895 Rhodes and Jameson were recalled to Britain for an official investigation of the failed raid. Rhodes spent a weekend at his old college in Oxford. At breakfast one day he chatted with an undergraduate. The young man hoped for a career in law. Rhodes asked him if there were any “coloured men” studying for the bar. The youth replied that yes, there were, and that he liked them. Rhodes' gruff response was “Well, I don't. I suppose it is the instinct of self-preservation. In South Africa we have perhaps a million or two whites, and many millions more of black people.”24
In short, when Rhodes boasted on numerous occasions that he wanted “equal rights for every civilised man” he did not intend for this to apply to blacks. Rotberg argues that Rhodes “introduced a basic realignment of black-white power relations” and produced a drastic “reordering of the prevailing psychological climate.”25 To the extent that his policies foreshadowed apartheid, Rhodes contributed to the poisoned relations between blacks and whites in South Africa and neighboring countries that have lasted through this entire century.
Several politicians and writers both in the Cape and in London objected to Rhodes' racial policies. Yet the government failed to intervene. Prior to 1895 this was partly because he was so successful in expanding the empire that no one in power wanted to throw him off course. Moreover, after his disgrace, London wished to mollify Afrikaners in the Cape and Boers in the Transvaal; hence the lack of any movement to undo those racial policies favored by the Dutch.
Rhodes was not a man about whom one could be neutral. This was true in his own lifetime and remains so today. An eight-part BBC television series entitled “Rhodes,” first broadcast in Britain in the fall of 1996, aroused yet new debates. Some commentators found it even-handed, but others condemned it as blatantly one-sided. It is interesting to note, however, that the “one-sidedness” depended on one's point of view. Rhodes House Warden Anthony Kenny observed that “the benefit of every doubt was given against him [i.e., Rhodes]” and dismissed the series as “poorly scripted” and filled with “atrocious acting” and a “baffling” story line.26 One historian who reviewed the series denounced it as revisionist muck-raking of the worst sort, because it portrayed Rhodes as a sadist, a sexual pervert, and a founding father of apartheid – rather than giving Rhodes his due as a commercial statesman and innovative colonizer. Another historian, however, asserted that the series is “almost too soft” and lets Rhodes off “too lightly.”27
The Scholarships
What prompted this man of action to establish a program of scholarships at the University of Oxford? Just as controversy and mystery continue to surround the man himself, so too there are debates about his educational bequest.
The story begins in the 1870s with what one writer has called Rhodes' long series of “weird” wills.28 Another author has called them his “spiritual autobiography.”29 Rhodes wrote the first when he was 18 years old and the eighth and final one at age 46.30 There is no need here to discuss the intricate twists and turns that occurred from one will to the next. All of them had in common a general vision. Rhodes believed that the English-speaking “race” was best suited to lead the world toward greater prosperity, happiness, and peace. He thus wished to promote union, or at least closer relations, among all English-speakers in order to foster this goal. The means to achieve this changed from one will to the next, but the underlying ideals remained constant.
Even while an undergraduate at Oxford Rhodes conceived himself to be a man of destiny. In 1877 he composed a revealing document called his “Confession of Faith.” In it he said that his goal in life would be to render himself useful to his country. He then explained that:
I have felt that at the present day we are actually limiting our children and perhaps bringing into the world half the human beings we might owing to the lack of country for them to inhabit, that if we had retained America there would at the present moment be many millions more of English living. I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimen of human beings, what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence.31
This confession, which Rotberg characterizes as a “jejune effervescence,” was largely incorporated into Rhodes' second will.32 In this same will Rhodes boldly expounded on his aims in these words:
The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, The Holy Land, the valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.33
The United States and vast stretches of the rest of the globe would not become colonies but rather independent members of a federal empire. To accomplish this task, Rhodes would leave all his wealth in the hands of a clandestine society made up of intelligent, energetic men who shared his vision. This secret club would be modeled on the Jesuits and the network of Masonic lodges. He hoped it would be “a church for the extension of the British Empire.”34
Over the next fifteen years Rhodes continued to tinker with his plan, thereby creating new wills. The government officials or trusted friends whom he named as trustees also changed slightly from one document to the next. As his thinking evolved, the expansion of the British Empire gradually subsided in importance while the establishment of world peace grew. He came to believe that education was the best means for changing and improving the world. In 1891 he announced plans to establish a great new teaching residential university in the Cape Colony. Dutch and English students there would not only receive an education but would mix together socially; their friendships would contribute to greater harmony among the leaders of a united South Africa. In letters and speeches of the late 1880s and early 1890s he expressed doubts about the practicality of a secret society for furthering his aims. His sixth will, dated 1892, contains no mention of such a group.
The Jameson Raid and Rhodes' fall from power ended any hope for his South African university. By 1895, however, he had already concluded that such an institution would be too limited in scope-as it would affect only South Africa. Rhodes wanted to change the world. Already in his seventh will, in 1893, he had decided to establish Oxford scholarships for students from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other parts of the Empire. In doing this he was in all probability greatly influenced by the writings of two contemporaries: J. Astley Cooper, editor of a London weekly magazine, and Sir Thomas Hudson Beare, a South Australian who held academic posts both in London and Edinburgh. Borrowing ideas from them he asserted:
I consider that the education of young colonists at one of the Universities in Great Britain is of great advantage to them for giving breadth to their views, for their instruction in life and manners, and for instilling into their minds the advantages to the colonies as well
