How Did Cecil Rhodes Affect the Map of Africa?

Who Was Cecil Rhodes?

Cecil John Rhodes (1853–1902) was born in Bishop's Stortford, England, and went to Natal in 1870, aged 17. He moved to the Kimberley diamond fields in 1871 and by 1888 had merged the main mines into De Beers Consolidated Mines, which controlled about 90% of the world's diamond output. He also founded Gold Fields of South Africa (1887) after gold was found on the Witwatersrand in 1886. He entered the Cape parliament in 1880 and was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. He died near Cape Town in 1902 and is buried in the Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe. His will founded the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford.

Rhodes openly believed in the racial superiority of the "English-speaking race" and in extending British rule over as much of the world as possible. That ideology, together with the search for minerals, drove his expansion into Africa.

How Rhodes Changed the Map, Territory by Territory

Bechuanaland (Botswana): securing the road north

The "Missionaries' Road" from the Cape to the interior ran along the eastern edge of the Kalahari. Rhodes called it the "Suez Canal into the interior" and feared the Boer republics or Germany (which had just claimed South West Africa) would block it. He pressed Britain to act, and in 1885 Britain declared the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Its southern part (British Bechuanaland) was later annexed to the Cape; the northern protectorate became Botswana in 1966. Rhodes wanted the protectorate handed to his company, but this was blocked after the Jameson Raid.

Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe): concession and conquest

In 1888 Rhodes' agents obtained the Rudd Concession from the Ndebele king Lobengula, granting mineral rights that Lobengula later said had been misrepresented to him. On this basis Britain granted the British South Africa Company (BSAC) a Royal Charter in 1889, allowing it to govern, make treaties and keep police north of the Limpopo. In 1890 the Pioneer Column of about 200 settlers and 500 company police entered Mashonaland and founded Fort Salisbury (now Harare). In the First Matabele War (1893–94) company forces with Maxim guns defeated the Ndebele and took Bulawayo. The Ndebele and Shona risings of 1896–97 (the First Chimurenga) were crushed. The territory was named Rhodesia in 1895; Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British colony in 1923, declared independence under white minority rule in 1965 and became independent Zimbabwe in 1980.

Northern Rhodesia (Zambia): treaties north of the Zambezi

North of the Zambezi, company agents signed treaties and concessions with rulers such as Lewanika of Barotseland (Lozi) in 1890. The company administered North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia, which were merged in 1911 as Northern Rhodesia (about 750,000 km²). Its odd "butterfly" shape came from agreements with Portugal (1891), the Congo Free State (1894, which gave Belgium the Katanga Pedicle that cuts deep into Zambia) and later arbitration over the Barotse boundary (1905). Britain took over administration in 1924, and the territory became independent Zambia in 1964.

Nyasaland (Malawi) and the Mozambique border

Rhodes helped finance the administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate (later Nyasaland, now Malawi) in the early 1890s so that the Shire Highlands would not fall to Portugal. His men also clashed with the Portuguese over Manica in 1890–91; the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 then fixed the border between Rhodesia and Mozambique, leaving the port of Beira in Portuguese hands but guaranteeing a railway to it.

The Cape Colony

As Cape Prime Minister, Rhodes oversaw the annexation of Pondoland (1894) to the Cape, and his Glen Grey Act (1894) and franchise changes restricted African land ownership and voting, foreshadowing later segregation laws in South Africa.

The Cape-to-Cairo Plan

Rhodes wanted an unbroken belt of British territory from the Cape to Egypt, joined by a railway and a telegraph line. The railway from the Cape reached Mafeking in 1894, Bulawayo in 1897 and, via the Victoria Falls Bridge (completed in 1905, after his death), Broken Hill (Kabwe) in 1906 and the Congo border in 1909. A separate line from the port of Beira reached Salisbury in 1899.

The plan failed for two geographic reasons. The Anglo-German (Heligoland–Zanzibar) Treaty of 1890 gave Germany the lands between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa, so German East Africa separated British territory in the south from Uganda and Kenya in the north; and the Congo Free State held the land west of Lake Tanganyika. After the First World War Britain took over German East Africa as Tanganyika, briefly making a chain of British-ruled territory from Cape Town to Cairo possible, but the railway was never built. Today you can travel between Cape Town and Dar es Salaam by train using South African, Zimbabwean, Zambian and TAZARA lines, but there is no rail link to Egypt.

Economic Legacy

• Mining economies: Kimberley diamonds and Witwatersrand gold funded expansion, and the BSAC held mineral royalty rights in Northern Rhodesia's Copperbelt, developed from the late 1920s, until Zambia's independence in 1964.
• Land: the company and later settler governments gave the best farmland in Southern Rhodesia to white settlers, a pattern formalised by the Land Apportionment Act of 1930. Land ownership remained a central political issue in Zimbabwe after 1980, leading to the fast-track land reform programme from 2000.
• Labour and taxes: hut taxes payable in cash pushed Africans into wage work on mines and farms and drove migrant labour across the region.
• Railways: the rail lines built in his era still form the backbone of transport between South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Rhodes' Legacy Today

Both countries named after Rhodes dropped his name: Northern Rhodesia became Zambia in 1964, and Southern Rhodesia (called simply Rhodesia from 1964) became Zimbabwe in 1980. Many towns were renamed too, including Salisbury (Harare) and Fort Victoria (Masvingo). The borders his company negotiated remain the borders of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Rhodes remains highly controversial. The 2015 "Rhodes Must Fall" protests at the University of Cape Town led to the removal of his statue there and sparked debate about colonial monuments in Britain and elsewhere. See also the Berlin Conference, the Scramble for Africa map, colonial Africa map and the country pages for Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Malawi.

Timeline

• 1870: Rhodes arrives in southern Africa.
• 1885: Bechuanaland Protectorate declared.
• 1888: De Beers Consolidated Mines formed; Rudd Concession signed.
• 1889: British South Africa Company receives its Royal Charter.
• 1890: Pioneer Column founds Fort Salisbury; Rhodes becomes Cape Prime Minister.
• 1893–94: First Matabele War; Bulawayo taken.
• 1895: The name Rhodesia adopted.
• 1895–96: Jameson Raid on the Transvaal fails; Rhodes resigns as Prime Minister.
• 1896–97: Ndebele and Shona uprisings suppressed.
• 1902: Rhodes dies.
• 1964 / 1980: Zambia and Zimbabwe become independent.