Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes conquered an area the size of England, Germany, France, and the Low Countries combined, adding a million square miles to Britain's African Empire and lending his name to a new country - Rhodesia. By age thirty-four, Rhodes had founded the DeBeers Company, achieving a worldwide monopoly on diamond production. He went on to earn a second fortune in gold, becoming the richest man in the western world before he was forty. A stalwart patriot and racist, Rhodes laid the foundations of modern apartheid and drew Britain into the bloody Boer War. He mercilessly pinned Africa under his control, believing it England's duty to colonize the world. Today, the monopolies are gone, apartheid is over, and Rhodes, once a hero, has been decried as a racist and imperialist whose only remaining legacy is the scholarship that bears his name. Antony Thomas's biography of Cecil Rhodes is the study of an idealist corrupted by power and of a nation forced under England's control against its will.

First sentence: March was insufferable; the most exceptional spell of oppressive weather anyone could remember.

Year

1996

Language

English

Publisher

St. Martin's Press

Editions

1

Pages

368

ISBN

9780312169824

Data source: Wikidata