Cecil John Rhodes

Rhodes, Cecil John (1853–1902), English politician and business magnate who first opened up Rhodesia to European settlement. Having made a fortune in diamond mining, he founded the De Beers Mining Company in 1888 at Kimberly in South Africa. After helping bring about the British annexation of Bechuanaland (1884), he also obtained the territory to the north, later called Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in his honor, which he managed until 1890. Prime minister of the Cape Colony from 1890, he was forced to resign because of complicity in the Jameson raid (1896) into the Transvaal. Much of his £6 million fortune went to found the Rhodes scholarships.

See also: Rhodes Scholarship.