# Cecil Rhodes **Entity class:** British imperialist, mining magnate, politician, and institutional founder ## Definition **Cecil John Rhodes** accumulated wealth and power through mining and colonial expansion in southern Africa, served as prime minister of the Cape Colony, founded the British South Africa Company, and endowed the [[wiki/Rhodes Scholarship|Rhodes Scholarships]]. The Rhodes Trust’s own historical account acknowledges Rhodes’s desire to extend the influence of the English-speaking world and his view that Oxford education could instill the advantages of maintaining imperial unity. His institutional legacy therefore joins coercive territorial empire to a longer-lived educational and elite-network mechanism. ## Relationships - **company:** [[wiki/British South Africa Company|British South Africa Company]]. - **legacy institution:** [[wiki/Rhodes Trust|Rhodes Trust]] and [[wiki/Rhodes Scholarship|Rhodes Scholarship]]. - **university:** [[wiki/University of Oxford|University of Oxford]]. - **later scholar:** [[wiki/John Templeton|John Templeton]]. - **collection route:** [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [Rhodes Trust — Who Was Rhodes?](https://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/impact-legacy/legacy-equity-inclusion/who-was-rhodes/) - [Rhodes Trust — Rhodes will and codicils](https://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/media2/nx4f5yks/willandcodicils.pdf)