Cecil John Rhodes

He never married. He had a very close relationship with Neville Pickering leading to speculations that he might have been homosexual. Pickering’s death devastated Rhodes further adding to this speculation.

He was very close to his friend Leander Jameson. Jameson took care of Rhodes during his final days, and continued living in the mansion the men had shared even after Rhodes’s death.

He suffered from ill health throughout his relatively short life. He had his first heart attack when he was hardly in his twenties, and his heart condition worsened with age. He died from heart failure in 1902, aged 48.

Cecil Rhodes was born in Hertfordshire, England, to Reverend Francis William Rhodes and his wife Louisa Peacock Rhodes. His father was a vicar in the Church of England.

He attended the Bishop’s Stortford Grammar School but he was asthmatic and had to be taken out of school because of health issues.

When Rhodes was 16, he was sent off to South Africa in the hopes that his health would improve in a better climate. His brother Herbert was already working there.

He arrived at South Africa in 1870 and joined his brother on the cotton farm he operated.

During that time, it was newly discovered that diamonds were available in abundant quantities in the Kimberly area. The Rhodes brothers joined the diamond rush in 1871 and worked at open-pit mines. They managed to earn a small fortune and learned a lot about the diamond business.

In 1873, he went to England to complete his studies. He enrolled at Oriel College, Oxford but stayed for only one term before returning to South Africa. He would travel back and forth to Oxford and South Africa before finally earning his B.A. degree in 1881.

He worked hard in the diamond business over the next few years and began buying all the smaller diamond mining operations in Kimberly with financing from N. M. Rothschild & Sons.

He established the De Beers Mining Company in 1880. Along with his brother Frank he also formed the Goldfields of South Africa which consisted of several large mines in the Transvaal.

He founded the De Beers diamond company which markets around 40% of the rough diamonds today. The company dominates the diamond business and is involved in open-pit, underground, coastal and deep sea mining in countries such as South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia.

As a politician, he strived hard to bring as much land as possible under the British Empire. Over his political career he is credited to have brought approximately one million square miles of African land under the British rule.