the diamond mines. Rhodes spent six months alone during the mid-1870’s.
There he developed his British Imperialism philosophies while wandering the unsettled plains of Transvaal, South Africa. It was after his heart attack in 1877 where Rhodes wrote down his ideas of a secret society in his will. The secret society would “extend British rule throughout the world and colonize most parts of it with British settlers, leading to the ‘ultimate recovery of the United States of America’ by the British Empire.” In 1880, Rhodes was elected to the Cape Parliament. It was the governing body of South Africa. It was there that Rhodes “succeeded in focusing attention on the Transvaal and German expansion so as to secure British control of Bechuanaland by 1885.” Rhodes secured mining grants from Lobengula, King of the Ndebele in 1888. It gave him a claim to what would become Rhodesia in the near future. During this time, on March 13, 1888 to be exact, Rhodes launched the De Beers consolidated Mines with Charles D. Rudd, where he met at Oriel College, Oxford, as his business
partner. During the time of the Anglo-Boer war, Rhodes’ health worsened. He returned to the Cape after traveling throughout Europe in 1902. Rhodes died in Muizenberg, South Africa on March 26th. To this day, the Rhodes legacy is very relevant. He left six million pounds. Majority of the money went to Oxford University. The money helped establish Rhodes scholarships to provide education at Oxford for students from the United States, the British colonies, and Germany. Land that was left in Rhodesia was eventually used to build a university. Rhodes may have started off at the bottom of the “totem pole,” but left a steep imprint in African history.