Lord Bryce, a former ambassador of Britain to the U.S. during World War I, once said about Rhodes, .
"From Cape Town to the Zambezi, it is all Rhodes. When I asked who built that, who made this industry, who created that, who is responsible for this, I get one reply - Rhodes." (.
From this quote it is shown how Rhodes was portrayed as a powerful, heroic figure in Britain. He was the man that gave Africa a name around the world. He built the core for the African industry, the same industry that still stands today-.
Rhodes built the core of the African industry, but were those really his intentions? Did he really want to rise up a lost continent and make its economy successful? The answer is, no. De Beers was a monopolistic amalgamation. A company who made a seven hundred percent profit. Obviously, the money was not properly being distributed. Workers for De Beers who worked in the mines were paid close to nothing. They were happy to have a job that paid; they did not care about how little their annual salary was. Also, Africans were kept out of the business side of the mining industry. British men, such as Rhodes, himself, were the ones who worked on the behind-the-scenes work. This was effective to running the company of De Beers, but it was not effective for the Africans. They did not have the intellectual skills to run a huge international trading company, and Rhodes surely had no intentions of teaching them how to one day be able to run the company of their own. His intentions were in favor of his own fortune and claiming as much profit as he was able to get. This shows directly why he was named the world's richest man at the age of thirty-seven.
Not only did Rhodes run the whole diamond business and had nearly complete control over the economic sector of Africa; he also had control over Africa politically. Rhodes, a racist imperialist, wanted to make Africa a colony of Britain.
