HISTORY:CECIL JOHN RHODES (1853-1902), the son of an English clergyman, amassed a great personal fortune by dominating the world market in rough diamonds and vastly extended Britain's African empire by diplomacy, commercial acumen and force of arms - or, as Philip Ziegler, the eminent historian, critically suggests, by "bribery, chicanery and ruthless bullying", writes Patrick Skene Catling.
De Beers, the company Rhodes founded to develop the diamond mines of Kimberley, once produced almost all the world's diamonds. A military campaign he instigated against the native Matabele armies gained "a mass of land the size of Spain, France and the Low Countries, and containing nearly a hundred separate, hardly consulted, peoples speaking seventy languages". Two countries, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, were named after him. Exploiting the labour of black Africans, whom, he said, should be treated as children, he became very rich indeed.
"He always considered great wealth to be a means to an end," Ziegler writes, "rather than an end in itself. Except when he was trying to impress for a specific purpose he saw no point in conspicuous expenditure; he liked to eat and drink well but took no pleasure from fine clothes, luxurious houses, yachts, liveried servants and any other fripperies of the rich. Money meant power. . . ."
As an Oxford undergraduate, before he achieved financial power, Rhodes wrote a "Confession of Faith", in which he declared a grandiose ambition to unify the whole civilised world under British rule. Young Rhodes believed the British were "divinely selected as the master race," and "Americans were still preferable to any other lesser breed and should be cajoled or bullied back into the imperial partnership".
In Ziegler's opinion, Rhodes's "Confession" was a "preposterous document", with "some of the alarming single-mindedness" of Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. However, his ambition never faltered and his principal attempt to realise it proved to be beneficial even after the Empire ceased to exist and the countries of the Commonwealth achieved independence. He felt that the elite youth of the English-speaking world would cooperatively help to bring about universal peace and plenty, if they, like him, were educated at Oxford University.
As a successful entrepreneur and politician, he arranged for the establishment after his death of the Rhodes Trust to award Rhodes Scholarships annually for ever. They are undoubtedly the most celebrated and avidly competed for scholarships of all time. He thus created a masterpiece of public relations: he is not reviled today for some of the ways he made money; he is esteemed for the ways he has been posthumously spending it.
Ziegler reproduces the whole text of Rhodes's altruistic last will in an appendix - 13 pages of fine print. He specified the criteria by which Rhodes Scholars, male only, were to be selected. "Literary and scholastic attainments" were to count predominantly, but he also sought candidates endowed with outstanding "fondness and success in manly outdoor sports", "qualities of manhood truth courage devotion to duty sympathy and protection of the weak kindliness unselfishness" "moral force of character and . . . instincts to lead". The use of commas was evidently not obligatory.
After an initial screening, applicants were to be judged by written examination, popularity ballots by fellow students and the testimony of headmasters. Rhodes was ahead of his time when he stipulated furthermore that "no student shall be qualified or disqualified . . . on account of his race or religious opinions". And Rhodes provided funds for an annual banquet for past and present scholars, trustees and guests who sympathised with his ideals.
THE FIRST 72 Scholars assembled in Oxford in 1904; 43 from the United States, nine from Canada and Newfoundland, six from Australia, five from South Africa, one each from Rhodesia, New Zealand, Bermuda and Jamaica, and five from Germany. Americans outnumbered the rest put together because Rhodes believed that on their return home their newly cultivated Anglophilia would strengthen the Anglo-American relationship and might even help bring the United States back into the Empire. The Germans, chosen by the Kaiser in person, were invited in the hope that an alliance of England, America and Germany would guarantee world peace. Rhodes would have been disappointed by the two world wars.
Generally, however, the Rhodes Scholarships have proved fruitful, producing half a dozen Commonwealth prime ministers, a couple of Nobel prize-winners, many other holders of high office in national legislatures and judiciaries, economic and industrial tycoons, and countless successful educators, doctors and lawyers. President Kennedy appointed Rhodes Scholars to senior posts in his administration. So did President Clinton, who is the highest ranking Rhodes Scholar of them all.
How can one assess the number of Rhodes Scholars that Ziegler, an Oxford man himself, calls "thinkers" or measure the Trust's increased influence since it had Rhodes's will amended to award scholarships to women and to improve interracial harmony in South Africa by the establishment of the Mandela-Rhodes Trust? Since the Trust was founded, more than 7,000 scholarships have been awarded. For a short time, from 1992 to l995, the scheme was extended to the European Union. According to a Trust spokeswoman, there are 11 Irish Rhodes Scholars: Darragh Byrne, Dr Patrick Coveney, Selina Guinness, Dr James Hall, Thomas Kiely, Dr Mark O'Neill, Dr Colm O'Reardon, Mike O'Sullivan, Dr Sinead O'Sullivan, Dr Siofra Pierse and Dr Eileen Reilly.
Philip Ziegler spent four years on this admirable chronicle of the Rhodes saga. His presentation of intricately detailed material is formal, lucid and drily witty. In short, it is clear that diamonds are a scholar's best friend.
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Patrick Skene Catling is an author
Legacy: The Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships, By Philip Ziegler, Yale University Press, 388pp. £25