of the will.
Another interesting clause in the will is the one stating that neither “race or religious opinions” should be a factor in the selection process. Within just a few years after the publication of the will the question arose as to whether blacks were eligible. The trustees cited this clause and decided that blacks indeed could be appointed. In doing so the trustees and selection committees violated what they all probably knew were Rhodes' intentions. Like most of his contemporaries, Rhodes often used the word “race” to mean what we today would take for “culture” or “nation.” When he put this clause in his will he intended to indicate that the Dutch and British “races” in South Africa and the American and German “races” could all enjoy his scholarships. He never expected that blacks would apply, much less be selected. Sir Edgar Williams, who for nearly three decades served as warden of Rhodes House in Oxford, has aptly stated that Rhodes built “better than he knew.”38 The trustees were able to follow the letter rather than the spirit of the law to make the scholarships more inclusive than their founder had anticipated.
The current warden of Rhodes House, Sir Anthony Kenny, has provided perhaps the best analysis of the seeming contradictions between Rhodes the man and the scholarships he established. In his speech at Georgetown University during a reunion of North American Rhodes Scholars in 1993, Kenny said that, apart from the stress on “manliness,” the four criteria Rhodes listed for his scholars “are to this day valuable and important human qualities.” Rhodes wanted evidence of high scholastic attainments, yet he himself required eight years to obtain a mere pass degree. He demanded physical vigor, as manifested in sports. Yet while at Oriel he was undistinguished in athletics. Though he showed much stamina through his career, his health was always a matter of some concern. Rhodes was one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, and yet there was no mention of entrepreneurship among the qualities he sought in his candidates. Instead, he wanted sympathy for, and protection of, the weak. He was an unabashed believer in the superiority of the English race, and yet he said race should play no part in the selection process. Finally, although he himself promoted more than one avoidable war, he declared his ultimate goal to be the pursuit of world peace through the international sharing of education.
In short, we might disagree about Rhodes' motives and actions. But, as Kenny concluded, we can admire that fact that “he was certainly not the man to believe that the way to make the world a better place was to make everyone else just like himself.”39
NOTES
1. Robert I. Rotberg, The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power (New York, 1988), 74, 78, 658–62, 675–77.
2. See G.N. Clark, Cecil Rhodes and His College (Oxford, 1953), 7; and Rotberg, The Founder, 86–87.
3. Rotberg, The Founder, 89.
4. Oxford Magazine, 13 (23 January 1895): 167.
5. Quoted in Clark, Cecil Rhodes, 5.
6. Ibid.
7. Ronald Currey, Cecil Rhodes: A Biographical Footnote (private printing, 1946), 11–12.
8. Quoted in Frank Aydelotte, The American Rhodes Scholarships: A Review of the First Forty Years (Princeton, 1946), 3.
9. Rotberg, The Founder, 94–95.
10. See Richard Symonds, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (Oxford, 1991), passim.
11. Ibid., 27–29.
12. J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902).
13. Hans Konig, “The Eleventh Edition,” The New Yorker, 2 March 1981, 74. For a brief introduction to this entire topic see Michael Howard, “Empire, Race & War in pre-1914 Britain,” History Today, 31 (December 1981): 4–11.
14. For Rhodes' career in Africa, Rotberg's The Founder supersedes all earlier biographies. Also see Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Randlords: The Exploits and Exploitations of South Africa's Mining Magnates (New York, 1986).
15. David Cannadine, review of Rotberg, The Founder, in The New Republic, 19 December 1988, 34.
16. Rotberg, The Founder, p. 678.
17. Ibid., 403.
18. G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men (London, 1912), 203–04.
19. Rotberg, The Founder, 5.
20. George Shepperson, “Cecil John Rhodes: Some Biographical Problems,” South African Historical Journal, 15 (1983): 55.
21. Like Rhodes himself, Rotberg's book is a flawed colossus. See the following perceptive reviews: that of David Cannadine cited in n. 15 above; J.D.F. Jones in Financial Times, 6 May 1989, weekend section, xii; Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in New York Times, 1 January 1989, sec. 7, 4; Conor Cruise O'Brien, in Atlantic Monthly, December 1988, 92–95; T.R.H. Davenport, in South African Historical Journal, 21 (1989): 95–100; David Alexander in TAO, 76 (1989): 132–43.
22. Rotberg, The Founder, 679.
23. Quoted in Rotberg, The Founder, 44. Throughout his book Rotberg deals extensively with Rhodes' racial attitudes and policies.
24. Quoted in Clark, Cecil Rhodes, 7.
25. Rotberg, The Founder, 361.
26. Warden's Christmas letter, December 1996, 10.
27. Daily Mail, 10 September 1996, 8; Sunday Times, 15 September 1996, section 10, 4; Times Literary Supplement, 11 October 1996, 22. Expanding on the script he wrote for the television series, Antony Thomas has published a balanced, solid book for the general public: Rhodes: The Race for Africa (London, 1996). Shortened to six hours, the mini-series was first aired on PBS in the United States early in 1998.
28. Christopher Hitchens, Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies (New York, 1990), 298.
29. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 1.
30. Earlier authors who studied the wills counted seven of them. For example, see Sir Francis J. Wylie in TAO, 31 (1944): 129–38. Rotberg shows that there were eight. Prior to the seven that can be found today in Rhodes House, there was an earlier one, dated 1871. Unfortunately, no copy of that one has survived. See The Founder, 74, 662–67, 700 n.39.
31. Quoted in Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 4.
32. Rotberg, The Founder, 680.
33. For extensive discussions of the wills see Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 1–19; Wylie, TAO, 31 (1944): 65–69, 129–38, and 32 (1945): 1–11; Rotberg, The Founder, 101–2, 663-68.
34. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 8.
35. Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 14.
36.
