Cecil Rhodes

1853–1902

Cecil Rhodes was a British businessman, mining magnate and imperial politician who became one of the most powerful figures in southern Africa during the late nineteenth century. He built a fortune through the diamond industry, helped create De Beers and served as prime minister of the Cape Colony, while promoting an expansive vision of British territorial control across the region.

Rhodes consolidated much of the Kimberley diamond industry, served as prime minister of the Cape Colony and used the British South Africa Company to extend British-controlled settlement north of the Limpopo. His policies were central to dispossession, company rule and the creation of Rhodesia.

Wilbur Smith’s Men of Men places Cecil Rhodes behind the consolidation of southern African mining wealth, where small prospectors are displaced by companies and the language of opportunity begins to merge with territorial expansion. John Wilcox’s The Shangani Patrol makes the connection more explicit: Rhodes’s British South Africa Company provides the political and commercial force pushing into Lobengula’s Ndebele kingdom. Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa: The White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 sets Rhodes within the continent-wide partition in which chartered companies, private fortunes and imperial governments competed for land and resources. Pakenham’s The Boer War follows the consequences in southern Africa, where Rhodes’s ambitions, the Jameson Raid and the struggle over the region’s political future form part of the road to war.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Cecil Rhodes (2 series)

The Ballantyne in Order

by Wilbur Smith 4 books 4.5(18,621)

All books in this series

1. A Falcon Flies

First published 1980 · 4.4(5,233)

Read more Amazon

2. Men of Men

First published 1981 · 4.4(4,822)

Read more Amazon

3. The Angels Weep

First published 1982 · 4.5(4,811)

Read more Amazon

4. The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

First published 1984 · 4.6(3,755)

Read more Amazon

Simon Fonthill in Order

by John Wilcox 13 books 4.2(4,074)

The Simon Fonthill series follows an unconventional British officer and intelligence scout through the wars and crises of the late Victorian and Edwardian empire. Beginning in southern Africa in 1879, Simon Fonthill and his Welsh comrade ‘352’ Jenkins move from regular army service into scouting, diplomacy and irregular…