# Cecil Rhodes and the dream of empire

The diamond and gold magnate who founded De Beers, colonized the land named Rhodesia, and dreamed of a secret society to spread British rule worldwide. His will built the Rhodes Scholarships and the Rhodes Trust, which fed Milner's Round Table; his segregationist laws prefigured apartheid.

*This story part of: The British Empire*
*This story parallel: World order: the transnational forums*
*This story parallel: Secret societies and influential orders*
*This story part of: Colonialism: the conquest of the world*
*This story parallel: The slave trade*
*This story part of: The pillars of modern power*
*This story parallel: Freemasonry in Britain, America, and the colonies*
*This story part of: Land and resources*
*The Boer War: gold, the camps, and the making of South Africa part of this story*

## 1877 — Rhodes writes his Confession of Faith

The 23-year-old Cecil Rhodes sets down a Confession of Faith calling for a secret society to extend British rule over the whole world and bring the United States back into the empire. It is the documented ideological seed of the Rhodes Trust and, in Carroll Quigley's contested thesis, of a lasting Anglo-American elite network.

## 2 June 1877 — Rhodes is initiated into the Apollo University Lodge at Oxford

Cecil John Rhodes is initiated into the Apollo University Lodge (Oxford Lodge No. 357) on 2 June 1877, while a student at Oriel College, and remains a Freemason for life. He later attends occasional lodge meetings in Kimberley, though he reportedly finds Masonic ritual frivolous. His Masonic membership is well documented; claims that Freemasonry shaped his political or imperial projects are speculative and not established fact.

## 12 March 1888 — Founding of De Beers

Cecil Rhodes consolidates the Kimberley diamond mines into De Beers Consolidated Mines. The company controls most of the world's diamond supply for the next century.

## 29 October 1889 — Rhodes and the British South Africa Company

Cecil Rhodes won a royal charter to colonize lands north of the Transvaal, later named Rhodesia after him. His dream of a Cape-to-Cairo empire drove British expansion in southern Africa.

## 1890 — Rhodes becomes Prime Minister of the Cape Colony

Having made a diamond and gold fortune, Cecil Rhodes becomes Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. He uses the office to expand British territory northward and to shape policy in the interests of the mining industry.

## 1891 — Rhodes and Stead found a secret society, 1891

Quigley asserts that on February 5, 1891, Cecil Rhodes and W. T. Stead formally organized a secret society, with an inner circle of Rhodes, Stead, Brett, and Milner, to extend British and English-speaking power.

> "This association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years."
> — Tragedy and Hope, p. 120-122

## 1893 — The conquest of Matabeleland

Rhodes's British South Africa Company defeats the Ndebele kingdom in the First Matabele War, using the Maxim gun to devastating effect. The conquest opens the territory that would be named Rhodesia after him, later Zimbabwe and Zambia.

## 1894 — The Glen Grey Act and the roots of segregation

Rhodes's government passes the Glen Grey Act, restricting African land ownership and using taxation to push Black men into wage labor for white farms and mines. Historians read it as a template for the later apartheid system of land and labor control.

## 1895 to 1896 — The Jameson Raid and Rhodes's fall

A raid into the Boer-ruled Transvaal, backed by Rhodes and led by his ally Leander Jameson, aims to trigger an uprising and seize the goldfields. It fails completely, forces Rhodes to resign as Cape prime minister, and helps set the stage for the Second Boer War.

## 26 March 1902 — Rhodes dies and endows the Rhodes Scholarships

Cecil Rhodes dies at 48. His will endows the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford to train future leaders in his imperial ideals, and channels his secret-society dream into the Rhodes Trust, which under Alfred Milner fed the Round Table movement. A documented pipeline of elite influence into the twentieth century.

## 11 November 1965 — Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence

Rhodesia's white minority government declared independence to avoid handing power to the Black majority. The move led to sanctions and a long guerrilla war before majority rule arrived as Zimbabwe.

## March 2015 — Rhodes Must Fall and the reckoning with empire

Students at the University of Cape Town launch Rhodes Must Fall, a campaign to remove Rhodes's statue that spreads to Oxford and becomes a wider movement to confront the colonial legacy. The modern bookend to his story, and a fight over how the past is remembered.