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A HISTORY OF BRITAIN by Andrew Chater
Transcript from the online video resource
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THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA (1873)
You find me in Oxford, one of the
most beautiful cities in England, and
home to one of our oldest
universities. It‟s a place that oozes
learning and culture – the epitome,
in the mind of the 19th century Brit,
of what it meant to be „civilized‟.
And I want you to picture a scene
from 1873. A young man called
Cecil Rhodes had come up here to
study as an undergraduate – not
some fresh faced student straight
out of school, but already, at 21, a „man of the world‟.
He‟d left home at 17, he‟d gone to South Africa, he‟d got rich buying up holdings in diamond
mines, and now here he was, in Oxford, attending lectures given by professors who loved, with a
passion, the whole idea of the British Empire. Oxford back then was a hotbed of what‟s now called
“imperialism”.
And the young Cecil Rhodes (that‟s
him, down there, on the façade of
Oriel College); he‟d lapped up these
ideas, and he wrote what he called
his „Confession of Faith‟: “I
contend”, he said, “that we are the
first race in the world. And the more
of the world that we inhabit, the
better it will be for the world. I will
work for the furtherance of the
British Empire, to bring the whole
uncivilized world under British
control”.
Now, seriously, this is scary stuff, alright? – this is real “Master Race” stuff. And what makes it all
the more frightening was that Cecil Rhodes wasn‟t „all talk and no trousers‟ – he was a real man of
action. He dreamt of a world under British control – and he left Oxford determined to play his part
making that dream a reality.
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Rhodes returned to Africa – at that stage still an unknown continent to most Europeans, barely
explored. The British and Dutch had settled the south. And in what‟s now Botswana, diamond
mines flourished. It was here Rhodes increased his wealth, until within a few years he controlled
90% of the world‟s diamond resources.
But further north, beyond the Limpopo, in what‟s now Zimbabwe, Rhodes had heard tell of
goldfields – and this was what spurred him, on his great imperialist adventure.
He mounted an expedition into Matabele land. He tricked the Matabele with promises of
friendship. When they realised they‟d been duped, he turned on them with Maxim guns – the
world‟s first machine guns. One thousand five hundred Matabele warriors died in one afternoon.
And what did Cecil Rhodes call the land he‟d conquered? Rhodesia. He named it after himself.
I‟m in Rhodes House in Oxford, built
with money left the university by
Cecil Rhodes. And I‟ve got here two
maps that show the consequences
of this kind of rampant imperialism
in the late 19th century –
imperialism, frankly, gone mad. This
is the first. This is Africa in about
1860. The British and the Dutch are
down here. Apart from that, there‟s
not much European involvement bar
a few coastal trading ports. But you
move on, to about 1910 – after fifty
years of maxim guns and the exploitation of mineral rights – we now find the entire continent
carved up, between different European powers – Germany, France, Belgium, Portugal. And all the
areas in pink (Nigeria, and this vast swathe from South Africa all the way up to the Sudan), this
was ours.
What justified this land grab, was our belief – as Rhodes put it – that the more of the world we
inhabited, the better it was for the world.
And it‟s true, we came armed not just with guns, but with all the fruits of our civilization. We built
railroads. We provided a global marketplace for local goods. Best of all, we introduced traditions of
government, of law, that we considered decent and fair. And for three generations we governed
half of Africa.
And yet – decency, fairness – it‟s all in the eyes of the beholder. Fighting spears with Maxim guns
– that‟s hardly fair. Taking land that wasn‟t ours, hardly decent. And therein lies the contradiction
that underscored our Empire, and eventually destroyed it.
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