Rhodes Hard Change

     Everything man has ever created has been from this earth. The value of our creations depends upon the skill of creation and the cost of the material which is dependent on its usefulness and scarcity. Through human history, gemstones have proven valuable for both reasons being difficult to find and procure and widely applicable. Of all the gems, diamonds capture the modern mind most severely, but the unbreakable, clear crystal's first use was to sharpen stone weapons to keep mankind alive.
     Diamond mining was underway in India by the 300s B.C. and were traded throughout the world for millenia. By the 1700s Indian mine production faltered and encouraged travelers to seek mines elsewhere - something never done before. By 1725 Brazil became the new producer of the world's diamonds and continued producing under 50,000 carats a year. By 1870 Brazil's production had plateaued at 200,000 carats annually. In 1866 a 21 carat diamond was discovered in a stream bed in South Africa and created a mining boom that continued through the last three centuries. In the first ten years after mining began in South Africa, global production doubled, and by 1882 more diamonds had entered the market than had existed for 2,000 years.
   An asthmatic teenager from England who traveled to South Africa for his health in  1871 and, leaving his brother's cotton farm, realized the potential from these new, enormously productive mines. Combining small mining rights he had purchased with a friend over the years, he established, De Beers Mining Company in 1880. By 1888 he had purchased Kimberly Central Diamond Mining Company for $25 million. A few years later De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd controlled 90% of global diamond production.

     With diamond production escalating faster than market demands, prices crashed, but Rhodes, a clever businessman, used his dominance of the production market to secure escalated sales prices through so release of stockpiled reserves. His production and reserve monopoly made this strategy successful in controlling the market and effectively established a vertical monopoly as Rockefeller achieved with oil production in America in the same period.
     Aside from his business accomplishments, Rhodes gained several political offices of the Cape Colony in South Africa. An extremely motivated imperialist, Rhodes pushed for northern expansion into the interior and created tension with native tribes, Boers, and other imperialist powers including Portugal, Germany, and Belguim. His press northward to control the mineral rights of Africa's interior was a significant motivator to the 1884 Berlin Conference, the "Scramble for Africa" that drew boundaries on African lands for European empires.
     A political businessman of extreme wealth, Rhodes used his effectively unlimited mineral rights to expand British influence northward, and he sought to establish a Red Line railroad from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt to connect the continents lands. Though unsuccessful with his imperialist goals, his other successes made him a made of wealth and renown. At his death in 1902 his will donated much of his money to established the Rhodes scholarship which allowed promising Germans, Americans, and British opportunity to study at Oxford University "regardless of race" effectively opening the scholarship to native Africans in the decades to follow.
     Buried in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) Rhodes's legacy has soured over the century. His De Beers mines have lost the absolute monopoly of the market, the British Empire has relinquished her African colonies, and his political history is now seen as oppressive and racist. None the less, Rhodes started from nothing and used his own skill, ingenuity, and opportunities to become one of the most successful businessmen in the late nineteenth century and a testament to the driving energy of the British Empire.


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Agatha Tyche