De
Beers money, he set up the British South Africa Company, and this firm
received a charter that was even more fantastic than the De Beers
charter. It permitted the company not only to strike north into the
vast territories now known as the Rhodesias but "to make treaties,
promulgate laws, preserve peace, and maintain a police force." In 1890,
while Rhodes's men were moving north and founding cities, he became
Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and he was still holding that office
when the Jameson Raid took place. He had known in advance that there
would be a raid, had appeared to approve of it, and then, at the last
moment, had sent a telegram to Jameson telling him to call it off. The
telegram never arrived. There was a great deal of indignant clamor
about the raid all over the world, and Rhodes quickly resigned as Prime
Minister. In 1899, the year the Boer War broke out, he was in high
favor again, both in Africa and England, and he said, "My career is
only just beginning." During the war, he set up a small munitions
factory in Kimberley. Every shell it turned out was inscribed
"Compliments from C.R." For a long time he had had serious heart
trouble, and in 1902, just before the war ended, he died, at the age of
forty-nine.
The
careers of Rhodes and Barnato were closely intertwined with those of a
number of other South African millionaires whose names became famous in
England around the turn of the century. Suddenly arriving in England as
they did with their fabulous fortunes to buy horses and houses and
paintings and cases of champagne, they were more noticeable in the
London of that day than Texas millionaires are now in New York. Things
have changed since. The diamond industry has grown
