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The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes
This is the first comprehensive biography of Cecil Rhodes in a generation. This critical work elaborates the life and times of Rhodes, showing how his racist politics impacted mining, industry, transportation, warfare, and society, while discussing how his controversial policies fueled a lasting white-dominated colonial society and had an enduring influence on modern South Africa.
Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the world's most important diamond mining company, De Beers, as well as a gold-mining concern called Consolidated Gold Fields. While he was a busy entrepreneur, he was also a member of the Cape Colony's legislature and served as prime minister from 1890 to 1896, a key period for the development of racial discrimination. His British South Africa Company was given a charter to govern what is today Zambia and Zimbabwe. His most famous legacy is the Rhodes Trust, which funds the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University.
A complex figure, admired and detested in his own time, Rhodes dreamt to unite Southern Africa's colonies and republics into one state, dominated by white settlers, with labor provided by Black people who were constrained and pressured by discriminatory laws. He built his wealth on the backs of African migrant laborers, for whom he had little regard. His British South Africa Company was accused of fraud. And in 1895 and 1896, he famously encouraged a failed plot to overthrow the independent Boer republic in the Transvaal. Rhodes' coup helped to precipitate the South African War, which started in 1899 and ended in 1902, the year of Rhodes' death.
This authoritative biography focuses on the relationship between Rhodes' well-known activities in business and politics and the development of Southern Africa's infrastructure, most famously his plan for a Cape-to-Cairo railway. Rhodes envisioned a region where racism became embedded in the mining, farming, communication, and transportation industries. He pursued this vision in the face of opposition from many quarters. Understanding the extent of Rhodes' activities helps us to understand the challenges of modern Africa and the recent Rhodes Must Fall movement. A critical analysis of this contested figure, The Colonialist offers an original portrait of a crucial figure of his era.
Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the world's most important diamond mining company, De Beers, as well as a gold-mining concern called Consolidated Gold Fields. While he was a busy entrepreneur, he was also a member of the Cape Colony's legislature and served as prime minister from 1890 to 1896, a key period for the development of racial discrimination. His British South Africa Company was given a charter to govern what is today Zambia and Zimbabwe. His most famous legacy is the Rhodes Trust, which funds the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University.
A complex figure, admired and detested in his own time, Rhodes dreamt to unite Southern Africa's colonies and republics into one state, dominated by white settlers, with labor provided by Black people who were constrained and pressured by discriminatory laws. He built his wealth on the backs of African migrant laborers, for whom he had little regard. His British South Africa Company was accused of fraud. And in 1895 and 1896, he famously encouraged a failed plot to overthrow the independent Boer republic in the Transvaal. Rhodes' coup helped to precipitate the South African War, which started in 1899 and ended in 1902, the year of Rhodes' death.
This authoritative biography focuses on the relationship between Rhodes' well-known activities in business and politics and the development of Southern Africa's infrastructure, most famously his plan for a Cape-to-Cairo railway. Rhodes envisioned a region where racism became embedded in the mining, farming, communication, and transportation industries. He pursued this vision in the face of opposition from many quarters. Understanding the extent of Rhodes' activities helps us to understand the challenges of modern Africa and the recent Rhodes Must Fall movement. A critical analysis of this contested figure, The Colonialist offers an original portrait of a crucial figure of his era.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2025
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August 4, 2025He was a polarising figure, revered by his admirers as a patriotic hero yet reviled by others for his egotism and amorality. At least one journalist thought he had a ‘vein of vulgarity’, exemplified by ‘a passion for diamonds and a contempt for women’. This powerful man was susceptible to ‘flattery of the grosser kind’ and showed ‘a tendency to bully those who were in no position to retaliate’. He was guilty, too, of ‘racial arrogance’. His peculiar brand of charisma worked by converting conspicuously bad behaviour into a display of dominance. ‘We have always a weakness’, Edward Roffe Thompson wrote, ‘for the strong man who shows his strength by smashing the Ten Commandments’.
Cecil Rhodes as the Donald Trump of the late 19th century: the analogy is less outlandish than it might seem. Representing a disruptive combination of wealth, celebrity, and megalomania, Rhodes mixed business with politics and conflated territorial conquest with personal aggrandisement. The Trump that returned to power for a second term has been increasingly Rhodes-like in his fixation on enlarging the boundaries of the United States, and in his view of land inhabited by other people as inert repositories of extractable resources. Like Rhodes, oddly, Trump reveres the British monarchy while disdaining almost every other institution. Despite its hostility to immigration, the Trump administration has rolled out the red carpet for the population most beloved by Rhodes, the white minority of South Africa. The Trumpist magnates who grew up in South Africa, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, are even more indebted to Rhodes’ technologically sophisticated, surveillance-intensive, and militarised brand of capitalism. Of course, there are significant differences, too; Rhodes saw the accumulation of wealth as a means to the ultimate goal of imperial expansion rather than the other way around. Still, one of the frustrations of William Kelleher Storey’s thorough but unfocused biography is that it holds back from acknowledging the troubling connections between Rhodes’ world and our own, even when they leap off the page.
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Erik Linstrum is Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of Age of Emergency: Living With Violence at the End of the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Cecil Rhodes as the Donald Trump of the late 19th century: the analogy is less outlandish than it might seem. Representing a disruptive combination of wealth, celebrity, and megalomania, Rhodes mixed business with politics and conflated territorial conquest with personal aggrandisement. The Trump that returned to power for a second term has been increasingly Rhodes-like in his fixation on enlarging the boundaries of the United States, and in his view of land inhabited by other people as inert repositories of extractable resources. Like Rhodes, oddly, Trump reveres the British monarchy while disdaining almost every other institution. Despite its hostility to immigration, the Trump administration has rolled out the red carpet for the population most beloved by Rhodes, the white minority of South Africa. The Trumpist magnates who grew up in South Africa, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, are even more indebted to Rhodes’ technologically sophisticated, surveillance-intensive, and militarised brand of capitalism. Of course, there are significant differences, too; Rhodes saw the accumulation of wealth as a means to the ultimate goal of imperial expansion rather than the other way around. Still, one of the frustrations of William Kelleher Storey’s thorough but unfocused biography is that it holds back from acknowledging the troubling connections between Rhodes’ world and our own, even when they leap off the page.
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Erik Linstrum is Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of Age of Emergency: Living With Violence at the End of the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2023).
December 21, 2025
Great book that shows how material conditions limited Rhodes, and also how the material conditions created by Rhodes still impact South Africa today
January 8, 2026
4.75⭐️
Highly insightful on an important issue
Highly insightful on an important issue
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews