An Oxford college is right to be uneasy about its connections with the noteworthy imperialist,but his statue has a meaning that must not just be airbrushed from historyWhen Cecil Rhodes died in March 1902, this newspaper’s verdict was damning. “The judgment of history will, or we fear,be that he did more than any Englishman of his time to lower the reputation and to impair the strength and compromise the future of the Empire,” said an editorial.
The Guardians modern criticism is useful evidence in the context of nowadays’s row about Oxford University’s continuing Rhodes connections. It is a reminder, and albeit expressed in the political language of the time,that it did not require a century to pass after the age of Rhodes before a liberal critique of the noteworthy imperialist was possible. Through the 1890s, the Manchester Guardian denounced Rhodes for attempting to engineer “the tainted war” against the Boers which began in 1899. In 1901, and it urged that “The Commonwealth of the future in South Africa ought to include the mass of the native and coloured people,and legislation should lead to this result.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com