Talk:Cecil Rhodes

Corrections - Boere vs Farmers

@Chris troutman Apologies if you think that my edit attempted to re-write history. It is my contention that the Barkley West community were in fact not "Boers" as is stated on this page and that the term Boers refers to the citizens of the countries of the ZAR and Orange Free State. So, I simply used the correct English Language word, in lieu of the later Afrikaans word for farmer that was incorrectly used.

Corrections - Political Control

It is my contention that is it common historic accepted fact that Rhodes had ZERO political influence over the ZAR in 1895 It is further my contention that Rhodes did not CAUSE the Matabele war, please check your source citations, the effect that Rhodes had was that the actions of the aggressors came at an inconvenient time... - also please refer to the war and its page on wikipedia and the sources and citations in that page for confirmation... I simply edited to use the historically correct and accepted English language name for the independent country of ZAR, to make more sense and to avoid confusion, then my other edit was to use a capital to describe Government. You use capitals to describe other Governements, is this a POV / NPOV problem? or reasoning?

Text removed from lede.

I have removed the following text from the lede, as it is not supported by the sources cited that I can read, and his will is a primary source, not suitable for such use. If there are a number of Wikipedia:Reliable sources that claim he believed in "ahistorical conspiracy theories " I think it could be re-added, but at the moment there is no justification for this claim.

Rhodes believed in many ahistorical conspiracy theories to justify his white supremacist views, such as his belief that the ancient Greeks had built the civilization of Great Zimbabwe, and that white Europeans were 'the first race in the world'. Under the reasoning that 'the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race', he advocated vigorous settler colonialism and ultimately a reformation of the British Empire so that each component would be self-governing and represented in a single parliament in London.♥ L'Origine du monde ♥ ♥ Talk ♥

References

Someone has vandalized DOB and DOD.

Make changes to dates. 2601:445:8480:A8C0:C858:99B6:7CFC:5EF0 (talk) 04:02, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Members of the British Empire

The present text includes the strange claim that 'One of Rhodes's dreams (shared by other members of the British Empire) was for a "red line" on the map from the Cape to Cairo (on geo-political maps, British dominions were always denoted in red or pink).'. What is meant by 'members of the British Empire'? Does it refer to countries, such as Canada or Australia, which were parts of the Empire? Does it refer to any and every citizen of the Empire, or more legalistically, every subject of Queen Victoria? I suspect that what it actually means is 'supporters of the expansion of the British Empire', or 'enthusiasts for the Empire', of which Rhodes was certainly one. But if this is the intention, it ought to be clarified, and preferably supported with at least a few examples. Incidentally, I don't know if it is true that on geo-political maps 'British dominions were always denoted in red or pink'. It is probably true on coloured maps published in Britain and the Empire, and the convention may have been followed in other countries, but that would need further research. And colour printing was still not common in the 1990s, so there were probably a great many monochrome maps.2A00:23C8:7907:4B01:1454:379D:46CD:BBDD (talk) 16:26, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

I removed the vague phrase 'shared by other members of the British Empire'. The claim can be reincluded if someone can make it more specific and source it. I left the rest as is, as although the claim about the maps being red is unsourced (which should be fixed), I do believe it is true. LastDodo (talk) 11:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Africans that died and so forth

A recent edit stated that Rhodes was a 'Genocidal maniac responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans.' Now this was unsourced and hardly the right tone for a wikipedia article, so was rightly removed quickly. But there does seem to be an absence of information about numbers of Africans that died or in some other way suffered in this article. We are told in the Rhodesia section that 'He ordered a police officer to "kill all you can"'. In the 'Politics in South Africa' section it says 'He introduced various Acts of Parliament to push black people from their lands and make way for industrial development.' In both cases the reader is left wondering how many people were affected by these actions and policies. Various questions are prompted - How many died, what happened to those that were driven off their land, etc. I seem to remember reading somewhere that many displaced Africans ended up working in slavery-like conditions in mines. I think more of this kind of information would be worth adding and would help explain why he is such a lightning rod for so many people. LastDodo (talk) 12:16, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Africa is not a place for the faint hearted (more so back then). I think what we have today is a lot of young 'intellectuals' in the fashions of the day, applying their cafeteria-cultured mindsets to his actions and attitudes bereft of any understanding of his world and what it took to operate in it.

I am aware he had a superiority mindset towards black Africans (easy to acquire back then when you turn up in an environment clothed and are greeted by people buck-naked devoid of math/science/engineering). In his mind he saw improvement in black lives in education, work and industry (the same way he himself and his civilisation operated) and he was bloody-minded about that. Apparently today that attitude is evidently an aspect of White Supremacy ... which would shock Rhodes as he would (I guess) in his own mind believe that the inverse of that was to keep black people in a perpetual state of un-development (easy to enslave and easy to abuse).

So yes, of course add his actions but you have to temper that by examining the prospective outcomes of his inaction (a level of balance that many people who attack Rhodes are unwilling to apply which is ironic, as many of these people are direct beneficiaries of his legacy). 2001:8003:70F5:2400:BC11:EAD4:7061:D9CE (talk) 17:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

There is also a lot of evidence that Rhodes shared a lot of mutual respect amongst the tribes he engaged with in Africa at the time. I think the reasons why that is (in the context of his day) need to be explained a bit more to contemporary generations.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.134.99.146 (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong. I am all for a fair representation of Rhodes and I am all for context. I certainly agree people are very judgemental of past figures and rarely look for deeper explanations of apparently abhorrent behaviour. But that is not an argument for keeping out significant facts such as the number of people that died as a result of his 'kill all you can' order. I'm reading this article and I literally want to know just out of curiosity. I mean even if my goal was to defend Rhodes to the hilt, I could hardly do it without knowing this fact - defence lawyers need to know the charges too. LastDodo (talk) 09:08, 20 July 2022 (UTC)