Free (Kindle) Rhodes: The Race for Africa [19th C South Africa Politician Biography]

[ATDrake]

Rhodes: The Race for Africa by India-born English author Antony Thomas (Wikipedia), a documentary filmmaker and television presenter who was raised in South Africa, is his biography of the controversial 19th century British imperialist businessman and politician (Wikipedia; also incidentally the dubious protagonist of this month's Phoenix Pick Press Free Book of the Month offering), following his life from earlier years as an immigrant cotton farmer to South Africa, to his rise to power and lasting impact upon the eventual nation, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press.

This was originally published in 1996 by BBC Books, and was apparently part-researched during the making of a documentary for them.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

Description
‘My ‘special relationship’ with Cecil Rhodes dates back to the late 1940s, when, as a small child growing up in Cape Town, I would be taken by my grandparents to the botanical gardens in the city centre to spend a few reverential moments before the statue of Cecil Rhodes.’

So begins Anthony Thomas in a personal but objective account of a modern tragedy. Today the only monuments to the man are the scholarships awarded at Oxford University that bear his name and a civic centre in Bishop’s Stortford, the place of his birth.

Thomas was prompted to work on his eight-part BBC documentary by African events in 1980, when the new nation of Zimbabwe was formed out of Southern Rhodesia, sixteen years after Zambia had reverted to its new name from Northern Rhodesia. The show aired in the months after Nelson Mandela, to whom the book is dedicated, was elected President of South Africa.

Thomas outlines a life of a man who drew Britain into her most bloody conflict in the years between Waterloo and the First World War.

Having arrived in South Africa in his teenage years as a cotton farmer, Cecil Rhodes soon founded a set of diamond mines by exploiting the discovery of natural resources.

In 1880 Rhodes created De Beers, a company which monopolised the global diamond market. He followed this by profiting from the natural resources in gold, realising that South Africa had to sell their labour to its colonialists.

After a brief period studying at Oxford, where he suffered a heart attack, he returned to Southern Africa and dealt with illegal diamond buying, falling share prices, smallpox, sabotage and matters of business. Communication was improved with the introduction of telegraph facilities, which relayed messages around South Africa and back to England.

While in England Rhodes had been heavily influenced by new political thought, and stood for Parliament, establishing himself in Cape Town as Prime Minister of the region.

He also appointed intermediaries in the manner of a skilled diplomat and politician, whose lives Thomas also details.

There was also the infamous time when his own man, Jameson, launched his own raid on locals. Rhodes had originally set about dealing peacefully and in war with chiefs, rulers and Portuguese claimants of African land.

Controversially, Rhodes had set in motion most of the elements which led to the apartheid regimes of the twentieth century, passing laws restricting voting rights and education to segregate the people. This clouds judgement on his brilliant career, which came to an end at the time of the Boer War, aged 48, in 1902.