Speaker 1: What's in conquering my dominating my colonial colony. Jesus, I
Speaker 1: don't know that. We're talking to Robert Evans behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards badly introduced podcast about even worse people. Today we're
Speaker 1: doing another motherfucking episode about white English dudes in Africa
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds. So strap the fuck in everybody. Uh,
Speaker 1: my guest today say you don't know how to do
Speaker 1: an introt to a podcast ever? Again, that was phenomenal. Continue,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. My guest today, Jason Petty a
Speaker 1: k A pro West West. I'm coming in blind. So
Speaker 1: I had no idea we were doing another white colonial
Speaker 1: in Africa. This is we're not We're not doing another
Speaker 1: white colonial in Africa. Actually, we're doing the white colonial
Speaker 1: in Africa. We're talking about the guy we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Problem might be the whitest man who ever lived. Um,
Speaker 1: we are talking about Cecil, motherfucking Rhodes. The boy's name
Speaker 1: is Cecil Cecil. Let's go Cecil. And he's the namesake
Speaker 1: of Rhode disja. Um oh my god, yeah, I'll tell
Speaker 1: me Rhode is named after him. Yeah, Rhoda was his
Speaker 1: personal property. Um, so the Cecil Rhodes is not just
Speaker 1: like an influential imperialist. He's one of like he's Hitler
Speaker 1: Stalin Mao level of influential in the world. Um he is.
Speaker 1: In addition to owning Rhodesia and another nation as his
Speaker 1: private property, he governed a third country. He controlled of
Speaker 1: the world's diamonds supply. Uh oh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: he helped invent apartheid. Um, so like that that's where
Speaker 1: I'm from. Apartheid. Yes, like, here we go. That's why
Speaker 1: didn't know you. I didn't think about the Rhodes thing.
Speaker 1: I just do it from the apotheid stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: here we go. Yeah. Yeah, he's like he's bastard with
Speaker 1: the capital be bold underlying three exclamation points. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: one of the big ones. Yeah, he's one of the
Speaker 1: big ones. And he is like Mark like when you
Speaker 1: see the when you see like the fucking like the fashy,
Speaker 1: proud boy types out in the street. He's what every
Speaker 1: every one of them wants to be. Like. Cecil Rhodes
Speaker 1: lived the dream life of an imperialist. Um. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool stuff. Prop it's cool stuff. This is I
Speaker 1: can't wait, dude, this is one of those episodes where
Speaker 1: I included a bunch of quotes from him, and then
Speaker 1: I had to go through the quotes and edit out
Speaker 1: the inn word repeatedly because he says it a lot. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so like this is why I was smiling so much.
Speaker 1: I remember early on in my career there was is
Speaker 1: this like venture capitalist guy that just really took a
Speaker 1: liking to me because he's super wealthy, super white, but
Speaker 1: he loved hip hop, so he was essentially trying to
Speaker 1: help mentor me and my business thoughts. But he would
Speaker 1: say things like I bought that company because who says
Speaker 1: you can't? And then he would be like and his
Speaker 1: whole thing was like, dude, that's He's like, that's the
Speaker 1: money got to live by. Who says you can't? You know,
Speaker 1: you just go pursue your dreams? Who says you can't
Speaker 1: do it? And I just thought, okay, you're where do
Speaker 1: I start? Man like you saying? I'm like you're you're
Speaker 1: trying to motivate me, but you turned me to funk
Speaker 1: off because I'm like, what do you mean? Who says
Speaker 1: you can't? I mean, actually I know what you mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, I don't I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go down this road. But yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: it giggles, because I was like, yo, he was telling me,
Speaker 1: this says like a good thing, Like, hey, man, who
Speaker 1: says you can't? Yeah? I think it's you got one
Speaker 1: of those You've got one of those reminders that we
Speaker 1: all get from time to time that there are within
Speaker 1: this planet, there are multiple planets, and that guy lives
Speaker 1: on a different planets, on a different one. Just just
Speaker 1: that's not ours. He's on the who says you can't planet,
Speaker 1: He's on the yeah, And I'm just like I just
Speaker 1: I God, okay, I guess yeah, because for me, I
Speaker 1: have I do have who says you can't feelings. But
Speaker 1: it's when I'm looking at like like like a like
Speaker 1: a really fancy bag of coffee, Like it's twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars for this bag of coffee, who says I can't? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll get I'll get the nice coffee. I like how
Speaker 1: he translated that into like prop speech. That's great. Yeah
Speaker 1: you know I love it. Yeah, you know. Whereas with him,
Speaker 1: it's like the company that makes the coffee. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know this is his family. You know, it's it's there.
Speaker 1: It's their granddad's plantation in Lumbia. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I want a coffee company. You know
Speaker 1: who says you can't. I'll just buy it from them.
Speaker 1: I'll give him a good price. And that's it is
Speaker 1: very appropriate because Cecil Rhodes is that guy. But he's
Speaker 1: he's a step above that guy. So that guy's a
Speaker 1: step above you and I we we we say that
Speaker 1: when we think about buying a nice product. He thinks
Speaker 1: about that. When Cecil Rhodes was that for Nations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, I can't. You know what, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: it like, I'm just gonna take this. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: is the guy we're getting into um and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start. Cecil John Rhodes was born on
Speaker 1: July five, eight fifty three, in the hilariously named town
Speaker 1: of Are you ready for this? Prop Here we go,
Speaker 1: Bishop Stortford in Hertfordshire, England. Um probably pronounced wrong. Who cares?
Speaker 1: It's the English um Bishop not a town name, but
Speaker 1: is a town name. But that's not what you should
Speaker 1: name a town. I wish I understood that. I wish
Speaker 1: I understood or like language animalogy of like British things
Speaker 1: like thornberry and yeah works in stire like why yeah
Speaker 1: Worcestershire Wooster, I think is how you're supposed to say it,
Speaker 1: like yeah, like what's the wars going on with you people?
Speaker 1: Why that? That obviously must be safe word and nobody
Speaker 1: can figure out how to pronounce it and that's why
Speaker 1: everything's so fucked up. That's a good get. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like we just all kind of
Speaker 1: left the English alone on their island for too long
Speaker 1: and that was a bad call. Yeah, because that little,
Speaker 1: that little teeny island conquered the planet. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: came up with some weird things to ways to pronounce
Speaker 1: words in weird ways to pronounce things yes and very
Speaker 1: enizes worse. Yeah, just can't y'all have no saut just
Speaker 1: add some weird stuff. Anyway, if you're English, this might
Speaker 1: be a hard episode to listen to because we're we're
Speaker 1: going to be going off. But yeah, anyway, so uh
Speaker 1: Cecil was the fifth son of Reverend Francis William Rhodes
Speaker 1: and Luisa Peacock his best biographer, probably Robert Rotberg, calls
Speaker 1: the Rhodes family circumstances modest but hardly deprived. And this
Speaker 1: is something I'll probably quibble with him on a bit,
Speaker 1: because modest is not how I would describe the Roads friendly. Um,
Speaker 1: both sides of his family owned a significant amount of property.
Speaker 1: As late as nineteen o one, the Roads siblings were
Speaker 1: receiving rent payments from six D properties and bishops. That's
Speaker 1: not modest, that's not modest. Yeah, it would be fair
Speaker 1: to say that Cecil never worried about money in his
Speaker 1: entire life. Um, the Roads were of modest means though
Speaker 1: within the world of the British upper crust. So within
Speaker 1: the social environment they existed in. They were middle class,
Speaker 1: but they existed in the upper like five percent of
Speaker 1: of the British nation. You know, yeah, there's there's money.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they got they got the c
Speaker 1: class Yeah exactly, Okay, got it. Yeah, they rent there
Speaker 1: that like today, They're the kind of family that rinse
Speaker 1: yacht's a couple of times a year but doesn't because
Speaker 1: they just can't handle those slip fees. Yeah, got it,
Speaker 1: got it. So Cecil's mother and father spawned uh. Copiously,
Speaker 1: they produced nine children in very quick succession. Seven of
Speaker 1: those kids survived to adulthood, which means they were pretty
Speaker 1: good at being parents by the standards of the time.
Speaker 1: You get seven and nine into adulthood, you're doing all right.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifties. That's pretty good for scentage. Because that
Speaker 1: bodio boy, Yeah, it's a yeah no no, yeah, yeah no,
Speaker 1: it should have been more like five. Really. Cecil was
Speaker 1: child number four, the middle kid, and he was most
Speaker 1: definitely his mama's boy. Um Rickett the family servant, and
Speaker 1: I should say that boys named Rickett. Yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: had a family servant named Rickett. His name Rickett. That's
Speaker 1: like what you put into a show if you're making
Speaker 1: fun of the British shuffle upper crust as you give
Speaker 1: him a servant named Rickett. You give him a servant
Speaker 1: named after a disease. Yeah, which understand was wrong, which
Speaker 1: I'll putting use words randomly, very funny. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the family servant, Rickett later recalled he was his mother's boy,
Speaker 1: her favorite. I mainly included that quote, yeah, just because
Speaker 1: I wanted to laugh at the fact that they had
Speaker 1: a servant named Rickett. Um. So Cecil was the only
Speaker 1: one of his siblings whose mother called him my darling,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts, she was a very nurturing mother.
Speaker 1: While her children were young, she acted as their teacher,
Speaker 1: helping them learn to read and write. Cecil's father was
Speaker 1: a very different sort of parent. The couple had married
Speaker 1: when she was twenty eight and he was thirty six,
Speaker 1: which was unusual because that's very old for a woman
Speaker 1: to get married in this period of time. Like she's
Speaker 1: a spinster at um. So you would say that, like
Speaker 1: he he Actually I was like, sorry, Sophie, And that's
Speaker 1: just the way they talked in the back then, Sophie.
Speaker 1: It's awful. I mean, low key. All of the rich
Speaker 1: people back then were in the teenagers. Like that's the
Speaker 1: way it worked in those days, and it was messed up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you got to give Cecil's dad credit for, you know,
Speaker 1: marrying someone who's an actual adult. Um, that's good. Uh so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this did mean that he was in his fifties
Speaker 1: by the time Cecil came into the picture. He was
Speaker 1: not a super fun dad was a very strict disciplinarian,
Speaker 1: and the children often ran to their mother for comfort.
Speaker 1: Robert Rothberg's Cecil's biographer or Cecil's biographer writes, quote, Ms.
Speaker 1: Rhodes was unusually skilled in establishing supportive relations. Well liked
Speaker 1: by contemporaries and servants, she provided an ample measure of
Speaker 1: love for her children, especially Cecil. It was that special
Speaker 1: love which was the foundation of his invincible self confidence,
Speaker 1: an affirmative sense of self which was both a spur
Speaker 1: to accomplishment and a resilient buffer against the ravages of failure.
Speaker 1: To his credit and discredit roads throughout his lifetime. Was
Speaker 1: remarkably free of both guilt and shame. So his mom
Speaker 1: is very supportive, and maybe she should have been a
Speaker 1: little less supportive. Job. Let me tell Let me tell
Speaker 1: you the parent that actually cares about their kids. Biggest
Speaker 1: fear is that you were you actually showed your favorites
Speaker 1: and like cared for one more than the other. And
Speaker 1: then one of him is like well adjusted and wonderful,
Speaker 1: and then the other ones like you know, in and
Speaker 1: out of rehab, and you're like, not to shame anybody
Speaker 1: for that, but you're just like or the one and
Speaker 1: then like in this scenario, the one you actually unfairly
Speaker 1: favored turns out to be the piece of crap you
Speaker 1: was trying to avoid your saying, yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: where where this story is a leading unfortunately. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he grows up um yeah, very very very much coddled
Speaker 1: by his mama. Uh this, and he grew up very
Speaker 1: entitled as a result of this. And this is particular
Speaker 1: clearly illustrated by an anecdote from his nurse when he
Speaker 1: was five or six years old. She just made jam
Speaker 1: and had set it up high to cool. She left
Speaker 1: the room for a few minutes, and she came back,
Speaker 1: the jam was gone and Cecil had clearly eaten it.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna quote her relating the rest of this story. Cecil,
Speaker 1: did you eat that jam? Yes, he replied, I am sorry,
Speaker 1: it's gone. It was very good. Makes some more. I
Speaker 1: can't take any of this seriously. Yeah, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was a that. This is first of all, spot
Speaker 1: on great accident, um and five and he's giving orders
Speaker 1: to adults. Yeah, just hey, make more. I just I
Speaker 1: wish Cecil was Caesar, so our r sezel. So when
Speaker 1: a nurse comes in and says you eat that jam,
Speaker 1: and he goes hell yeah, mm hmm, makes him amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was seezed. Yeah. She described his attitude as superior,
Speaker 1: and he just told her to make more jam and
Speaker 1: walked away, whistling to his mom and asked what should
Speaker 1: be done with a boy like that, and his mom said,
Speaker 1: let him alone as long as he speaks the truth,
Speaker 1: which is my god. Look at that point, nurse, take
Speaker 1: your apron off and just be like, look, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of rich people in this city. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: work somewhere else. I don't need this. Yeah, at that point,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I would. I would not be bought. I'm
Speaker 1: already bossed by you. I would not be bossed by
Speaker 1: a five year old. It seems like the thing that
Speaker 1: he needs is the thing that's done in some households
Speaker 1: when you talk back to your mom or your auntie
Speaker 1: and they chunk their their sandals at you. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that just the kind of yeah, not nothing that hurts,
Speaker 1: but a sandal thrown at him. Yeah, just a nice
Speaker 1: chunkl just real, yea chocolate exactly. Yeah, just you know,
Speaker 1: just let me remind you which one of us is
Speaker 1: the adult. That's the way my poles used to say.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna remind you which one of us is
Speaker 1: the adult. Yeah, so that should give you some idea
Speaker 1: as to the way the kid grew up seeing himself
Speaker 1: and other people. Um, we don't know very much about
Speaker 1: like his dad personally. There are a few details that
Speaker 1: I kind of find tantalizing, one of which is that
Speaker 1: as a preacher, he was eventually a vicar um. He
Speaker 1: was famous for never delivering a sermon longer than ten minutes.
Speaker 1: So I grew up, grew up in a Baptist you know,
Speaker 1: a Black Baptist church. Talk about ten minutes sounds great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that part sounds cool. And the other thing Cecil's
Speaker 1: biographer just drops this in the biography with no added context,
Speaker 1: probably because we don't have it, is that um Cecil's
Speaker 1: father despised the law and raised his children to not
Speaker 1: respect the law and to abide by their own more.
Speaker 1: He just hated He hated the idea of going to lawyers,
Speaker 1: he hated judges, he hated cops, And we don't know
Speaker 1: anything about why, but that was just something they were
Speaker 1: raised with a little conflicted about Cecil's daddy. Now you know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, okay, hold up, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like money, you know he was able to keep his
Speaker 1: kids alive. Uh keep the speeches short, speech short, and
Speaker 1: the cops. I'm like wait, and he married a full
Speaker 1: grown adult, you know, like he he was married and
Speaker 1: he went He wasn't at the middle school picking curls,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, he wasn't getting married to a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old at age, which a lot of dudes did. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh Cecil's first school was was a private school
Speaker 1: rather than a public school. And that means a different thing. Actually,
Speaker 1: that means he didn't go to he didn't go to
Speaker 1: like Eaton or one of the fancy schools. It means
Speaker 1: a different thing, I guess in England in this period.
Speaker 1: Um so he was always kind of insecure about the
Speaker 1: fact that he went to a private school and didn't
Speaker 1: get to go to one of the big fancy like
Speaker 1: he he didn't get to be an Etonian. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about that in our our episodes on the
Speaker 1: Wonga Coup, like that, that he didn't get to to
Speaker 1: get that early introduction into like the fancy pot of
Speaker 1: the of the of the white British boys education. Um So,
Speaker 1: maybe that's why he thinks he's like he's of modest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They his parents I think kept him out because his
Speaker 1: health wasn't great, although that's even debated. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of like argument over whether or not he was a
Speaker 1: sickly kid, which I just don't care to get into
Speaker 1: because it's boring. Um. Yeah, he was studious and intelligent. Um,
Speaker 1: And he's overwhelmingly described as having been very moody. His
Speaker 1: nurse claimed that he was never like a normal child,
Speaker 1: although the evidence she gives for this is also baffling
Speaker 1: because the thing that she she cites is that he
Speaker 1: only laughed when he liked, which is like when else's
Speaker 1: wait yeah, yeah, I don't understand what she was going
Speaker 1: It's just you get reminders reading through this that like
Speaker 1: oh yeah, this is like a again a different world,
Speaker 1: like I don't understand what these people are talking about,
Speaker 1: as like she's bitter that he didn't laugh at her job.
Speaker 1: Like to me, it was like, maybe you're just not
Speaker 1: funny because like your first story, Yeah, that's a warning
Speaker 1: sign from a kid. But like the fact that he
Speaker 1: doesn't laugh when he doesn't want to laugh, you can't
Speaker 1: really Yeah, yeah, well who does laugh when they don't
Speaker 1: want to laugh? You laughing light? You don't learn that
Speaker 1: until you're an adult. So yeah, of course he didn't laugh.
Speaker 1: I guess English kids are supposed to learn that earlier.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But for a little bit more context
Speaker 1: on Cecil as a boy, I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: quote from the Founder, which is a biography about him.
Speaker 1: When vexed, he would hide in a dark corner under
Speaker 1: the staircase, not speaking for hours. He sometimes fled to
Speaker 1: the family summer home with a book, poring over it
Speaker 1: by the hour, together resenting imperiously any attempted intrusion. He
Speaker 1: was prone to strange fits of moodiness, some vague uneasiness
Speaker 1: of spirit, whose source he was never able to properly communicate,
Speaker 1: unaware himself of whether it was melancholy or horror that
Speaker 1: seized him. Occasionally, the young Rhoades rocked himself to and
Speaker 1: fro and kept up a low crooning which was almost
Speaker 1: a moan, a crooning that never shaped itself into articulate word.
Speaker 1: At such times Ms Rhodes would go to his special son,
Speaker 1: and with her arms about him, she would beg him
Speaker 1: to explain the reason of his disquiet, but he never
Speaker 1: told her, locking himself. Then, as later in a private,
Speaker 1: possibly solipsistic world. There were similar moments when he curled
Speaker 1: up under the dining room table, remaining there invisible behind
Speaker 1: an overflowing table cloth. Despite the frantic searching of servants.
Speaker 1: He sat underneath, dinnerless through many a meal of his
Speaker 1: young ears, hugging his knees. Yeah, he's sounds autistic. Thing
Speaker 1: like I used to used to teach special ed and
Speaker 1: like that is like, um, and I've heard a number
Speaker 1: of theories as to like why it's a thing, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like you can't diagnose a guy who
Speaker 1: died decades before, like yeah, obviously, um, but it does
Speaker 1: sound like he was, Um he was. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like I don't even like the term neurotypical a lot.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he was. He definitely had some there's
Speaker 1: something going on there and maybe understanding yeaheah, they didn't
Speaker 1: have a name for whatever that was. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's that's a benefit for like being seeing
Speaker 1: the world differently can allow you to see options others don't.
Speaker 1: And I think kind of what you with this paragraph
Speaker 1: is getting at and what I've experienced with the number
Speaker 1: of a number of the autistic folks that I worked with,
Speaker 1: who would do who would have kind of behavior, coping
Speaker 1: behaviors like that. The moment is they're taking in like
Speaker 1: too much of the world, like yeah, yeah, like they're
Speaker 1: they're kind of overwhelmed by all of the sensory stimuli
Speaker 1: because their brain, for whatever whatever ours like other people,
Speaker 1: their brain maybe filters out more or something. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's part of why Cecil was able to see some
Speaker 1: of the options. He was able to see. I don't know, like,
Speaker 1: let's yeah, I don't want to psychoanalyze dude, but that
Speaker 1: there is something to being able to have a coping
Speaker 1: mechanism that maybe the rest does think are weird, but
Speaker 1: we don't. But we ain't go on, I met we
Speaker 1: have some mechanisms is probably a less less anger than us,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, that's so yeah anyway,
Speaker 1: and they're able to navigate a world U because his
Speaker 1: brain works a certain way, which we don't know obviously,
Speaker 1: is all. Yeah, it just it does sound like what
Speaker 1: we can say from that paragraph is that he's he
Speaker 1: was he felt overwhelmed a lot by reality as a
Speaker 1: little kid to an extent that was was was unusual.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah. Now, the author of that biography, Robert Rockberg,
Speaker 1: is very interested in developmental psychology, and he analyzes Cecil
Speaker 1: repeatedly through that lens. And I think the book was
Speaker 1: written in eight eight, so there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: he didn't. I think if it was written more recently,
Speaker 1: he probably he might have speculated more on some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've been talking about. UM. But he's
Speaker 1: he's real into like some Freudian ship um. And he
Speaker 1: notes that first and only children tend to get the
Speaker 1: most attention, while middle children learned better inner personal skills,
Speaker 1: and Rockberg basically writes that Cecil had elements of both
Speaker 1: of these things in his own upbringing. He was the
Speaker 1: middle kid, but he was also his mother's favorite, and
Speaker 1: so he got special attention and he he he theorizes
Speaker 1: that this kind of might explain how he grew up
Speaker 1: into the political animal he became, because he was both
Speaker 1: kind of surrounded by a very competitive family and he
Speaker 1: learned how to do diplomacy as a result of that.
Speaker 1: But he also grew up with this kind of limitless
Speaker 1: self confidence that comes from being, you know, the most
Speaker 1: favored child. So another major influence on the growing Cecil
Speaker 1: was the fact that his father was kind of a
Speaker 1: dick um, and as Cecil later confided to a friend,
Speaker 1: quote my father frequently and I am now sure wisely demolished.
Speaker 1: Many of my dreams is fantastical. But when I had
Speaker 1: rebuilt them on more practical lines, he was ready to
Speaker 1: listen again. He never failed to put his finger on
Speaker 1: the weak spots, and his criticism soon taught me to
Speaker 1: consider a question from every possible point of view. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it sounds a little bit dickish to me
Speaker 1: to like be tearing apart of kids dreams all the time,
Speaker 1: but Cecil clearly was grateful for it. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: somehow like read like read like a little history revisionism
Speaker 1: here like looking back going. I guess it was kind
Speaker 1: of cool that my dad was emotionally abusive and didn't
Speaker 1: let me imagine. Also, yeah, he just decided to stop
Speaker 1: doing the accent. Well, yeah, I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: it all the time, So Fie, I like to think
Speaker 1: that that your cat looks at you when you do
Speaker 1: those accents, like who is this man? I do enjoy
Speaker 1: a nice British accent. You're very good at it. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I have a real racist Italian accent to
Speaker 1: they don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, Okay,
Speaker 1: I only I only do it when I'm cooking pizza,
Speaker 1: which is fine. I'm a Talian. Yeah, but so um yeah.
Speaker 1: From an early age, Cecil's talents as a leader were evident.
Speaker 1: He loved to play soldiers, but he insisted on playing general.
Speaker 1: He was temperamental. And I find it noteworthy that the
Speaker 1: main people who reported on this later were not his
Speaker 1: actual family members, but the help all of whom seemed
Speaker 1: to have stories about the fact that he was very
Speaker 1: easily angered. Um. So all of like the service workers
Speaker 1: who know this kid say like, he's fucking dick. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, this kid. That's because they're didn't just dude.
Speaker 1: Now now I get a better picture. It's like the
Speaker 1: servants are action figures. They're just they're living accent figures
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah. Yeah, And that's and again one of
Speaker 1: the people a lot of people who come up later,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this when we talk about all
Speaker 1: of the racism, because he gets defended a lot by
Speaker 1: people today by saying like, well, we can't deny that
Speaker 1: he believed things that were racist, but it wasn't out
Speaker 1: of step with the attitudes of the time, which number one.
Speaker 1: I hate it when people bring that up because there
Speaker 1: were actually a bunch of dudes and ladies at the
Speaker 1: time who were like, hey, our society is racist, this
Speaker 1: is fucked up. It's like with slavery. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of abolitionists. Like, no, that was never a thing
Speaker 1: that was just like taken for granted as as right
Speaker 1: like it, it doesn't make it okay. But also like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the treating the help shitty that was very common among
Speaker 1: the British upper crust. Also doesn't mean he's not a dick,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. Yeah. When Cecil turned sixteen, he was more
Speaker 1: or less a man because again, people didn't live all
Speaker 1: that long back then. Um, So it was time for
Speaker 1: him to head to grammar school, which is a term
Speaker 1: for secondary school. UM. But I think was kind of
Speaker 1: more like it was basically like he the normal thing
Speaker 1: to have done for a boy and his his his um,
Speaker 1: his situation would have been to get on the track
Speaker 1: to start going to university right um, and and to
Speaker 1: have done that and go to some place like he
Speaker 1: wanted to go to Oxford, that was always his dream um,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to become a lawyer. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: he didn't like he It was kind of like a
Speaker 1: situation where he wasn't a certain about what he wanted
Speaker 1: to do, and um, he wound up picking another option,
Speaker 1: which was that his brother Herbert had moved to South
Speaker 1: Africa and started a cotton farm, and his family kind
Speaker 1: of thought that he wasn't really ready for college and
Speaker 1: he couldn't wasn't mature enough to go to join the
Speaker 1: military or anything like that. Yeah, they wanted to harden
Speaker 1: him up. That's what you did if you were an
Speaker 1: upper class British family and you had a kid that
Speaker 1: you wanted to toughen up, you would send them to Africa. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a yeah, my god. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just knowing it's South Africa just even adds yes, yeah right.
Speaker 1: And at this point South Africa is not a political entity.
Speaker 1: It's the Cape, the Cape colony. Um. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little in a little more details soon about like
Speaker 1: what the powers kind of in Southern Africa are at
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah. But yeah, Africa in this point for
Speaker 1: the British was seen as a place, not where, not
Speaker 1: just as a place where a white man could get
Speaker 1: rich because it was obviously that. But where a white
Speaker 1: boy could become a white man by ordering you know,
Speaker 1: black African people to work for him. Um yeah, and
Speaker 1: surviving malaria. Uh So. The primary motivating factor was probably
Speaker 1: Cecil's father, who saw his son as soft and an
Speaker 1: underachiever in school. Um. As Rotberg writes, despite the school
Speaker 1: prizes that Cecil had won, the vicar may have also
Speaker 1: had qualms about the thoroughness of his preparation in Greek
Speaker 1: and Latin. Furthermore, his father recognized that he was unfitted
Speaker 1: for a routine life in England. Sons of the sturdy
Speaker 1: Victorian middle class went overseas. They went to America and India.
Speaker 1: They were beginning to go out to Africa again. Dirty,
Speaker 1: sturdy middle sturdy middle class. That's what a great term.
Speaker 1: And that's who builds the British empire. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not the it's not the wealthy people, um like they
Speaker 1: have they fund a lot of it. But if you're
Speaker 1: looking at like the people who actually conquer most of land,
Speaker 1: it is these like these folks and Cecils, these kind
Speaker 1: of the upper classes middle class is who actually goes
Speaker 1: out to prove themselves in these places. It just I
Speaker 1: just wonder what it would like, honestly, feel like to
Speaker 1: really believe that, like the world is your playground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and no matter where I go, I'm at home because
Speaker 1: these are our colonies. So when you land in the
Speaker 1: Southern Cape, you're like, well, this is England. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a there wasn't not anymore, but there wasn't. One
Speaker 1: time when I was traveling the most, I I felt
Speaker 1: kind of similar to that having a US passport, because
Speaker 1: you can go anywhere and everybody like I can. I
Speaker 1: remember times in like Central America where they were just
Speaker 1: I'd be in towns where there was a whole police
Speaker 1: force just to keep just for the tourists, Like cops
Speaker 1: would like stop and give you rides and stuff to
Speaker 1: go get to go to the next bar, because it's
Speaker 1: like our job is to make sure that the white
Speaker 1: Americans who visit have the best possible time, because that's
Speaker 1: an important part of our Like it's yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: that to a small extent. You know, it's not the same,
Speaker 1: and it just both scenarios seem amazing. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying just yeah, blissfully unfair, but probably incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very definitely unfair. Um yeah, so uh yeah, there's pretty
Speaker 1: persistent rumors that Cecil's family sent him to Africa because
Speaker 1: he was sick, uh, and that wandering around Africa was
Speaker 1: like a medical treatment at the time. Like, and you
Speaker 1: get that a lot in the Cecil's life. He'll get
Speaker 1: ill and they'll be like, go to Africa and then
Speaker 1: he'll get another kind of ill and they'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: you need to head back to England. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of medicine was like go where it's hot, go
Speaker 1: where it's cold. Um. Rothberg, who I think is probably
Speaker 1: the most rigorous biographer of Cecil, thinks that this is untrue,
Speaker 1: that like looking at letters between him and his family,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that he was sick um and that
Speaker 1: he probably his family mostly wanted him to go get
Speaker 1: hardened up and go make the family wealthier by taking
Speaker 1: other people's stuff and his his his family invested a
Speaker 1: lot of money in him. His aunt gave him two
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, which was like that's a year's worth of
Speaker 1: living comfortably at that point in time, um, which he
Speaker 1: could use to like fund whatever adventure venture struck his fancy. Um.
Speaker 1: So he again he's he's his family. He's never worried
Speaker 1: about money. He always knows when he when he strikes
Speaker 1: out to Africa. Number one, I have a giant pile
Speaker 1: of cash and no matter what I do, my family
Speaker 1: will send more. Yeah, this is an understanding he has.
Speaker 1: So he lands in Africa in eighteen seventy and at
Speaker 1: the time, Southern Africa was divided between several white colonies
Speaker 1: were like the major powers in the area. There was
Speaker 1: the British controlled Cape Colony, which was roughly the size
Speaker 1: of Texas. When we call this a colony, most modern
Speaker 1: nations are smaller than the Cape Colony. Like, again, fucking Texas.
Speaker 1: It's the size. It's almost it's like it's the size
Speaker 1: of Europe basically. Yeah, there's the Orange Free State, which
Speaker 1: was a bunch of Dutch weirdos who really hated the Brits. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are like the Bowers or the Africanners. And there's
Speaker 1: the trans Ball which is also which it's run by
Speaker 1: even weirder Dutchmen and it was essentially a theocracy at
Speaker 1: this point. Um, and these are also Bowers. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So between these white people controlled lands. A lot of
Speaker 1: Southern Africa was still independent and controlled by people like
Speaker 1: the Sotho, the Nama, the Herrero, I think the Pseudo
Speaker 1: was one of them, the kimbay Um yeah or in
Speaker 1: the something we'll get to them later, the a yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and and these there's there's still there are
Speaker 1: still some very like the um the Mada Bali I
Speaker 1: think is one of them. Are are very have a
Speaker 1: lot of power and still control a sizeable chunk of land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, I know, I know a little bit
Speaker 1: just because of my black panther father and then um
Speaker 1: being like I perform in South Africa at least once
Speaker 1: a year except for this year. But like yeah, so
Speaker 1: like the Zulu region down south, you know, they're obviously
Speaker 1: very still very tribal, but like that, the power that
Speaker 1: they wielded among even surrounding tribes was like yeah, it
Speaker 1: was undeniable, and their interaction with the with the colonizers
Speaker 1: was like super crazy. Like you know the whole Shaka
Speaker 1: Zulu story Yeah, yeah, the Zulu wars and stuff, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is happening in this period? Like this
Speaker 1: is this is exactly the period where also the Zulu
Speaker 1: wars are happening, um, which are you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: a there's a phrase that sums up all of the
Speaker 1: wars between the English uh and and the bowers and
Speaker 1: um and the African tribes at this point, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a phrase that has come up with by a
Speaker 1: British poet and I believe the poem was kind of
Speaker 1: critical of of imperialism. But the phrases, whatever happens, we
Speaker 1: have got the maxim gun and they have not, which
Speaker 1: is like the maxim guns, the first heavy machine gun.
Speaker 1: That's all the wars is at the end of the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a few hundred white troops, thousands of African troops, but
Speaker 1: the white people have heavy machine guns. Yeah, the shield
Speaker 1: is still stretched like leopard skin. That's still their ship,
Speaker 1: no matter how Chraine you are. Yeah. And a lot
Speaker 1: of these African tribes they're fighting with rifles still, but
Speaker 1: it's one they have antique rifles and the white people
Speaker 1: have machine guns. So it doesn't you know, it doesn't matter, Yeah, Robert, Robert,
Speaker 1: you know what doesn't matter? You know who else has
Speaker 1: machine guns? No, No, that's not that's not I mean
Speaker 1: probably right, yea somewhere in the room. Um, that was trash.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So uh Cecil has just landed
Speaker 1: in Africa, Southern Africa and the Cape Colony. And the
Speaker 1: first thing he learns after setting foot on the continent,
Speaker 1: um is that the cotton he had gone there to
Speaker 1: grow cotton because his brother has this cotton farm, um.
Speaker 1: And this is a period where cotton's prices temporarily skyrocketed
Speaker 1: because the U s has a civil war and Sherman
Speaker 1: burns all of the cotton fields and stuff. So there's
Speaker 1: a period it was it was for the longest time
Speaker 1: not profitable for anyone but people who lived in the
Speaker 1: south of the United States to grow cotton because it's
Speaker 1: just the best region to grow it in and they
Speaker 1: were producing so much of it that there was no
Speaker 1: point in anyone else growing it. There's this brief cotton
Speaker 1: boom in this period in like the eighteen seventies, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't last long, but it's kind of at its
Speaker 1: height when he lands in Africa. But as soon as
Speaker 1: he gets to Africa, he starts talking with people and
Speaker 1: he learns that cotton he hears about essentially a a
Speaker 1: boom product that he finds a lot more exciting than cotton. Diamonds. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yes, diamonds. And he starts talking with as soon
Speaker 1: as he lands, he meets a guy who just discovered
Speaker 1: a massive diamond mine in southern Africa. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: and his brother actually doesn't show up to meet him.
Speaker 1: He leaves him a note because he was scoping out
Speaker 1: diamond fields when Cecil landed. Um and had also like
Speaker 1: kind of moved on from the cotton. These are all
Speaker 1: these are all speculators right like they're they're they're boom chasers.
Speaker 1: It's the same basic thing going on in Africa in
Speaker 1: this period, in Southern Africa in this period as was
Speaker 1: going on in California, you know, with the gold run goal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Cecil fell in love with the geography of Africa
Speaker 1: at once. Um. And when I say he fell in
Speaker 1: love with it, I I want to be really like,
Speaker 1: he didn't fall in love with Africa. He fell in
Speaker 1: love with the land in Africa. It was a possessive
Speaker 1: love and it did not include it's the people there. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's a long terms sort of thing. Yeah. Having
Speaker 1: spent a decent amount of time in Africa, there is
Speaker 1: and I say this in all honesty, there is something
Speaker 1: magical there and then just and also the idea that
Speaker 1: like inside of the ground somewhere in Africa, I mean,
Speaker 1: the the land just produces everything. Yeah, it's just like
Speaker 1: it's all of it is there. It's it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: It's massive, it holds, and so it's so much bigger
Speaker 1: like our maps. Do us a disservice? Do it a disservice? Um,
Speaker 1: because again, like one of the colonies in Southern Africa
Speaker 1: is the size of Texas, and there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: other ship they're still the other land in the world
Speaker 1: in Africa. It's huge. So yeah, I'm gonna read a
Speaker 1: paragraph that is something that that Cecil wrote about kind
Speaker 1: of the native peoples in Africa after he first arrived there.
Speaker 1: So this is one of his first impressions. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the term he uses here, I don't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: decide like I don't. I don't. I don't normally I
Speaker 1: don't read out like slurs if I can avoid it.
Speaker 1: I also don't want to say the K word. But
Speaker 1: it's it's the it's that it's that word in South yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the South Africa's version of the in word. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and at this point I should stay. They use
Speaker 1: both that word and the in word interchangeably, and they
Speaker 1: are they are slurs, but they're not using them as
Speaker 1: slurs because to them, this is just what you call
Speaker 1: these people like, it's not it's not. Yeah, so which
Speaker 1: is time and language is crazy alive? Yeah? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the people here shock your modesty. Many of them have
Speaker 1: nothing on excepting a band around the middle. They are
Speaker 1: fine looking men and carry themselves very erect. They all
Speaker 1: take snuff and carry their snuff boxes in a hole
Speaker 1: board through their ears. They also pay great attention to
Speaker 1: their hair and carry porcupine quills in it with which
Speaker 1: they dress it. You often see them sitting down in
Speaker 1: groups dressing each other's hair and picking the fleas out. Um.
Speaker 1: And then he talks about how he doesn't think they
Speaker 1: smell very good. Um, and he's very judgmental. Um, just
Speaker 1: a real judgmental dude. Uh So yeah, that's that's Cecil's
Speaker 1: first impression of these people. And he eventually receives a
Speaker 1: letter that his brother has sent him that included twenty
Speaker 1: dollars in a crude map to the cotton farm, So
Speaker 1: he heads to the cotton farm uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: pretty soon after he arrives there, the price of cotton falls. Um.
Speaker 1: But he he spends some time as a cotton farmer,
Speaker 1: and he's not really interested in cotton. He really wants
Speaker 1: to get into diamonds. But his family keeps writing him
Speaker 1: letters basically saying, don't like, stay stay on the cotton path.
Speaker 1: This is safe, Like this is a good investment. Diamonds
Speaker 1: are risky and that's kind of um. You know, his
Speaker 1: first year or so in in Africa is him constantly
Speaker 1: getting this like this flood of information about all the
Speaker 1: diamonds people are finding in different parts of southern Africa,
Speaker 1: and it makes his he write he writes that it
Speaker 1: makes his mouth water. Um and uh, but why why
Speaker 1: is his family so involved? But this is like that's
Speaker 1: what they do. This is what I think that's pretty
Speaker 1: standard for an upper crust family at the time. Like this,
Speaker 1: like a child is also an investment, and he reflects
Speaker 1: on the family and you you're you're putting a lot
Speaker 1: of money into him to send him there. You want
Speaker 1: him to do things that will will provider return. Still building, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're building the empire. Remember they're like middle rich, so
Speaker 1: you got to build the empire. Yeah. Yeah, And empires
Speaker 1: are built by people who are building private empires for themselves, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's what makes it doable. You know. It's the
Speaker 1: Eric Prince sort of thing. So, um yeah, they warn
Speaker 1: him away from this path, but he keeps. He keeps
Speaker 1: like hearing all these stories like that. There's he reads
Speaker 1: a story about how an African man found a diamond
Speaker 1: and traded it for a roll of tobacco to a
Speaker 1: white man, and the white guy sold it for eight
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. Um. His brother finds a couple of diamonds
Speaker 1: because he's always going off to go diamond finding some roads,
Speaker 1: just keeps getting his key, like he's got this hunger.
Speaker 1: He does describe it as like a physical hunger to
Speaker 1: go out and find diamonds. Um. Now, the first diamond
Speaker 1: had been discovered in South Africa three years earlier, in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, a black farm employee had found an
Speaker 1: enormous eighty eight carrot diamond the Star of Africa. And
Speaker 1: I think this is neat. So the diamonds were first found,
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell in human history, um,
Speaker 1: by people in southern India. And carrots are what you
Speaker 1: you kind of measure diamonds by because those people back
Speaker 1: in like seven hundred BC UM, would weigh a diamond
Speaker 1: next to carib seeds. And that's why it's called carrots.
Speaker 1: Is like the number of carab seeds that it takes
Speaker 1: to like way a diamond. Like that's where that word
Speaker 1: came from. We don't use carab seeds anymore, but like anyway,
Speaker 1: I just thought that was neat that research and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not carrots like every kid thinks, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's like carab seeds. So he was paid the black
Speaker 1: man who finds the Star of Africa, this massive diamond. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was paid five hundred sheep, ten oxen and a
Speaker 1: horse for it, which actually, like if you're looking at
Speaker 1: kind of like Africans who find diamonds and sell them
Speaker 1: to white people, that's not a bad price. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of ship. Yeah yeah, yeah, he came up off
Speaker 1: found in the ground. Yeah you know yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: star though did eventually sell for twenty five thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: which is like you're very wealthy if you've got access
Speaker 1: to that kind of money in in in this period
Speaker 1: of time. Um, it's about the equivalent of four million
Speaker 1: modern dollars. Yeah, that's some money. Yeah. So this does
Speaker 1: bring me to an interesting The fact that this guy,
Speaker 1: this farm worker who sold him and got paid reasonably
Speaker 1: nothing like close to what it finally sold for, but
Speaker 1: got paid pretty good does bring me to a point
Speaker 1: about Southern Africa in this period that is important to state.
Speaker 1: It was less racist than it became. This is actually
Speaker 1: it actually started out as a much less racist as
Speaker 1: a colony. Then it turned into and the guy we're
Speaker 1: talking about today is part of why it made that turn.
Speaker 1: So Obviously the British were outrageous bigots, um, and everybody
Speaker 1: in this period, every English person this period in the
Speaker 1: colony is tossing around the inn word like it's going
Speaker 1: out of style. But the Cape Town Colony was run
Speaker 1: under British law, and the British had a whole be
Speaker 1: in their bonnet in this period about the rights of men,
Speaker 1: and British law held in theory at least that all men,
Speaker 1: even black men, were equal. Um. And this was this
Speaker 1: was something that was enshrined in their in their legal
Speaker 1: codes in a way that it was not in the
Speaker 1: United States. Um, this was a principle. Um. It was
Speaker 1: not like a civil right in the way that we
Speaker 1: conceive of it, um. But it was a principle that
Speaker 1: was abided by. And so while while black men were
Speaker 1: very much second class citizens in the eyes of the
Speaker 1: white people who lived there, they still theoretically enjoyed full
Speaker 1: rights if they owned property, they could vote. Segregation was
Speaker 1: not a matter of law, um. And that this is
Speaker 1: within kind of the core of the Cape colony. And
Speaker 1: one of the things you'll see is that like within
Speaker 1: the core of the colony they hold pretty strictly to
Speaker 1: these these things that they consider proud traditions of the
Speaker 1: British Empire. And the further out you get from it
Speaker 1: in the areas where they're actually extracting resources, the less
Speaker 1: and less those legal niceties apply right um. But within
Speaker 1: the center of the colony they make at least an
Speaker 1: effort at that. And there are you know, to their credit,
Speaker 1: you will find lawmakers who when there are other people
Speaker 1: who are talking about like restricting the rights of of
Speaker 1: black Africans, there are lawmakers in the colonies who get
Speaker 1: very angry about that, white lawmakers. So there is this
Speaker 1: is part of why you can condemn people like cecil Is.
Speaker 1: There are white men at this time who are like
Speaker 1: that's not right, Like all men should be equal and
Speaker 1: they have to be treated that way under the law,
Speaker 1: and like you are you are developing a separate legal
Speaker 1: code for them, which is just worth noting that this
Speaker 1: is not when we talk about the racism of colonialism.
Speaker 1: I do think we often we often make it out
Speaker 1: to be something that everyone just thought was fine, and
Speaker 1: they didn't A lot of people pushed back, a lot
Speaker 1: of white people pushed back against you. It's part of
Speaker 1: why you can condemn the ones who didn't. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would even argue that, like that's like, yeah, things
Speaker 1: don't things don't start at the end, you know, And
Speaker 1: that I mean, the same happen in America, Like there
Speaker 1: couldn't without the without the work of you know, non
Speaker 1: racist white people. Yeah, we probably couldn't have gotten where
Speaker 1: we've gotten so far anyway. Yeah, And and I think
Speaker 1: for this it's because they don't stop anything from happening
Speaker 1: in the Cape colony, right, Like the racism is is
Speaker 1: enshrined into law despite their objections. But the fact that
Speaker 1: people objected is important, I think for for condemning the
Speaker 1: ones who were who pushed for the racism, including Cecil sure. Um.
Speaker 1: At this point in our story, though, Cecil is just
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old boy learning how to become a
Speaker 1: cotton farmer UM, or rather, he was learning how to
Speaker 1: command the Zulu laborers who actually work out his farm,
Speaker 1: how to run a farm, not how to farm. Now,
Speaker 1: it seems fair to say from the context that Cecil
Speaker 1: was not an excessively hateful racist in his personal interactions
Speaker 1: with the natives UM, but he was in his bones
Speaker 1: a capitalist, and he was very frustrated by the fact
Speaker 1: that these people were not. Their way of life did
Speaker 1: not jell well with capitalism, uh. He wrote, for though
Speaker 1: there are any amount of he uses that k word
Speaker 1: out here, there are such independent fellows that the greater
Speaker 1: part of them won't work. Their daily food is mealy
Speaker 1: maze porridge. They grow their own mealies, and the only
Speaker 1: thing they had must have his money for their hut tax,
Speaker 1: which is very light. And he considers this a problem
Speaker 1: that all they They're like, Oh, I grow my own food.
Speaker 1: I don't really need money, so I'm not gonna work
Speaker 1: that much because I don't. I don't want much. I'm
Speaker 1: happy just growing my own food and living. I don't
Speaker 1: want to like labor for someone else all the time,
Speaker 1: and he's like, this is a problem. It sounds kind
Speaker 1: of good. Yeah that that actually says like an I
Speaker 1: a life sounds pretty great. I have what I need. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But he's he's recognizing these people are not going to
Speaker 1: be ideal citizens um of of of global capitalism, which
Speaker 1: isn't a thing at this point, but is being born.
Speaker 1: And Cecil is one of the people who first kind
Speaker 1: of sees what's going to be born. Um, and he
Speaker 1: wants to build. He becomes enthralled with the idea of
Speaker 1: building a massive network of trade throughout Africa and the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. Um, so that products can move
Speaker 1: and go because he loves he in his bones, he
Speaker 1: loves capitalism. That's and yeah. So uh. He was unique
Speaker 1: among the white men in his area for being willing
Speaker 1: to lend his black workers money. Um. He and his
Speaker 1: brother both believed strongly that Africans were almost incapable of
Speaker 1: lying um. And that's so, like you could trust them
Speaker 1: with money. He actually said that, uh, he would prefer
Speaker 1: to loan them money than to like have money in
Speaker 1: the Bank of England, because the Bank of England was
Speaker 1: a less trustworthy institution. So like that's something. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's the that's the off balance racism where you
Speaker 1: like to hang I don't. Yeah, I feel so weird. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've heard some descriptions that his workers were basically slaves,
Speaker 1: And it does seem like later on, as the story develops,
Speaker 1: it became that way that does happen to the people
Speaker 1: who work for him, but that doesn't appear to have
Speaker 1: been the case in this period. In fact, in this period,
Speaker 1: Cecil probably could be described as one of the better
Speaker 1: white men in the Cape Colony to the black people
Speaker 1: who worked for him. Um, he was also one of
Speaker 1: the better insult me. Yeah, I mean it's not a
Speaker 1: it's not a compliment, it's I'm just trying to make
Speaker 1: sure there's proper context of this guy's journey. Um. He
Speaker 1: was also one of the better cotton farm managers, but
Speaker 1: he didn't really he never really liked farming cotton. Um.
Speaker 1: He couldn't stop thinking about diamonds. And in eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: a huge field of diamonds, the biggest diamond find in
Speaker 1: in the world, was found near a town now called Kimberly, Um.
Speaker 1: And at the time Kimberly was part of what was
Speaker 1: called greek A Land Um, which is an independent territory
Speaker 1: founded by a mix of some members of different African tribes,
Speaker 1: a lot of former slaves, but also groups of kind
Speaker 1: of disaffected white men. Like it's actually a very multicultural
Speaker 1: group of people who all kind of reject what's going
Speaker 1: on in the colonies of Africa and moved to this
Speaker 1: place in the middle of nowhere, um, dusty, unfertile land
Speaker 1: together so that they could be kind of free, almost
Speaker 1: like an autonomous zone. Yeah, I mean it was still
Speaker 1: like they had I think they had kind of like
Speaker 1: there was like a like a yeah, their leadership structure
Speaker 1: was was was you know, somewhat horizontal, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of people who were kind of
Speaker 1: rejecting what was being done elsewhere in Africa at the
Speaker 1: time and wanted to get away from it um. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's the Greeks, and it's a very I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do that whole story justice. It's worth
Speaker 1: noting as we tell the rest of the story, you
Speaker 1: from what I've read, you will not find in this story.
Speaker 1: In South African history books, Greeka Land has been pretty
Speaker 1: much written out of the written out of the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so, I'm gonna quote next from an article in
Speaker 1: the History News Network. Then, in June eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: a White prospector announced the discovery then eighty three point
Speaker 1: five carrot diamond at the place now known as Kimberly,
Speaker 1: so named after Earl Kimberly, the British Secretary of State
Speaker 1: for the Colonies. This site of the discovery just happened
Speaker 1: to be within Greek A territory, but fortune hunters never
Speaker 1: did bother to raise any questions with the Greeks as
Speaker 1: to the ownership of the mining rights. Just a few
Speaker 1: days earlier, the British Colonial Secretary and a dispatch dated
Speaker 1: May eighteen seventy one, had already authorized the British High
Speaker 1: Commissioner in Cape Town to extend the British territory in
Speaker 1: South Africa by annexing Greeka land. It seems unlikely that
Speaker 1: the close timing of these two events was purely coincidental.
Speaker 1: Of yeah, so, oh there's diamonds. I guess this is
Speaker 1: ours now, um yeah, And the Kimberly discovery came at
Speaker 1: a faithful time. Diamonds in South Africa then were like
Speaker 1: golden California again a thousand. The prospectors would just swarm
Speaker 1: any chunk of land that seems like it might hold wealth.
Speaker 1: And just before the discovery had come, there had been
Speaker 1: a number of false finds. Generally, people would like find
Speaker 1: a couple of diamonds and like an alluvial plain, which
Speaker 1: is like land around a river, um and people would
Speaker 1: swarm there, but there wouldn't actually be nearly as many
Speaker 1: diamonds as they'd anticipated. So that had happened a few times.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these guys were very desperate. So
Speaker 1: once diamonds are found in Kimberly and it's clear that
Speaker 1: this is a real find, tens of thousands of desperate
Speaker 1: miners start swarming in to tear the whole this big
Speaker 1: mountain that is the find apart. We're not mountain, like
Speaker 1: a hill, a large hill um. And yeah, Greeka land
Speaker 1: was brushed out of existence so that these guys could
Speaker 1: get rich. Uh. Quote from the History News Network, Greek
Speaker 1: a leader Nicholas water Bower, through a legal advocate, had
Speaker 1: during all this time been importuning the British colonial authorities
Speaker 1: at the Cape to respect Greek lands sovereign independence and
Speaker 1: its ownership of the land upon which the Diamond Field
Speaker 1: was situated to no avail. Finally, in May eight and
Speaker 1: armed rebellion broke out the light. The armed Greeks were
Speaker 1: no match for colonial troops armed with cannon and breech
Speaker 1: loading rifles. A massacre ensued, with the colonial forces suffering
Speaker 1: only nine fatalities. It signaled the beginning of the end
Speaker 1: for the Greek nation. Most of the survivors migrated several
Speaker 1: hundred miles to the northwest, settling ultimately in Southwest Africa
Speaker 1: now Namibia. So Greeks, you know, not a great story
Speaker 1: for them. Um, so yeah, the men there's yeah, there's
Speaker 1: just like an entire as, an entire like like there's yeah,
Speaker 1: there's they're just not in history books now like that
Speaker 1: what would they be they didn't win? Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so crazy that like, yeah, I guess they didn't exist,
Speaker 1: but no, it's all the existed. But now they're no yeah,
Speaker 1: not no more, not no more. So uh yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: The men who would come to work the Kimberly find
Speaker 1: were also Africans, um, but they were not people who
Speaker 1: had lived in the Greek a terror tory previously. They
Speaker 1: were a different group of Africans who had been dispossessed
Speaker 1: by the colonial greed of the Boers. Most of them
Speaker 1: were refugees from areas around the trans Fall in the
Speaker 1: Orange Free State, they've been pastoral nomads who had had
Speaker 1: their lands seized by military force. Uh they were destitutes,
Speaker 1: starving and homeless, and so a lot of these guys
Speaker 1: had no choice but to work the diamond minds because
Speaker 1: otherwise they were going to starve to death. Yea quote.
Speaker 1: Fortune hunters from all over Southern Africa and from Europe,
Speaker 1: America and Australia fought over claims well at the same time,
Speaker 1: remaining united and the common purpose of being the masters
Speaker 1: of black labor. Seven hundred individual claims or plots of
Speaker 1: ground containing a little more than eight hundred nine three
Speaker 1: square feet were marked off and taken possession of thirty
Speaker 1: thousand black laborers toiled away in that confined space, but
Speaker 1: were themselves prohibited from owning claims or dealing in diamonds.
Speaker 1: They were subjected to constant body searches and restricted to
Speaker 1: their Hutson tints by nighttime curfew. Any dark skinned person
Speaker 1: in the vicinity who could not prove he was employed
Speaker 1: as a servant or laborer was declared a vagrant and
Speaker 1: subject to flogging. So you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not a new story, not a new story. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: even you know, there are places in Central and South
Speaker 1: America and bring it back to coffee again that the
Speaker 1: locals that the farms that grow it, and the people
Speaker 1: that like harvest the coffee, they're legally not allowed to
Speaker 1: drink that, like the beans are only for export, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, And like, yeah, just it's like
Speaker 1: tail as old as time, like this day land. Yep.
Speaker 1: I can definitely say that. One radicalizing moment for me
Speaker 1: was during the time I spent in Guatemala hanging out
Speaker 1: with like some native Guatemalans in their homes and being
Speaker 1: given instant coffee, yeah, in an area surrounded by and
Speaker 1: being like, uh wait, we're on a coffee Like there's
Speaker 1: there's all of the world's coffee comes from here here.
Speaker 1: What is happening? Yeah? Why are we drinking net cafe?
Speaker 1: Does not compute? Yeah, it's because my country has all
Speaker 1: you walk into their village like, hey, guys, I got
Speaker 1: this single lordin guatemaland you guys want to try Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we grew that right, here, yea, it comes from here.
Speaker 1: We don't get that. We can't drink it though. And
Speaker 1: speaking of capitalism, Robert, you know what will let you know? Okay,
Speaker 1: well you know it's goods. Yeah, I'm no help. Yeah
Speaker 1: ah oh, those are some good ads. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you something. I'm about to use all those promo codes.
Speaker 1: I love promo codes because I love promotions, and it
Speaker 1: will put food on y'alls to table. I love food
Speaker 1: on the table. So while the Greek a territory had
Speaker 1: been annexed by the Cape Colony, it did not benefit
Speaker 1: from the same enlightened legal system as the rest of
Speaker 1: the colony, because again it's on the periphery. And while
Speaker 1: it's important for us in the cities to abide by
Speaker 1: these these laws that we all think are very very nice,
Speaker 1: once we get out to where the money's made, people
Speaker 1: stop talking about the rights of man, you know, because
Speaker 1: there's money. Yeah. It's the same thing as how the
Speaker 1: United States, our whole lives, talks a good game about
Speaker 1: the rights of man. But also, UH fundamentally could not
Speaker 1: exist in the same fashion if a large number of
Speaker 1: its UH critical products were not made in areas without
Speaker 1: any sort of labor laws. Yeah it wouldn't work. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just we've we've diffused the responsibility by making those
Speaker 1: be an independent countries now. So Cecil Rhodes was one
Speaker 1: of the very first white men to rush towards like
Speaker 1: he just kind of abandons the cotton farm and he
Speaker 1: goes to what would turn out to be one of
Speaker 1: the world's are just diamond minds, the Kimberly find And
Speaker 1: at the time, the hill where the mind was centered
Speaker 1: had a Dutch name, which I'm not going to try
Speaker 1: to pronounce, like I I don't even know how to
Speaker 1: begin pronouncing it. Long is how It's just I don't
Speaker 1: even know how to say it is wrong? Right? Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was nineteen when he traveled there to help his
Speaker 1: older brother, who bought a couple of claims um and
Speaker 1: roads immediately brought his considerable gifts to bear because he's
Speaker 1: a great organizer. He's great at maximizing productivity. He's one
Speaker 1: of these people who can who can just like, look
Speaker 1: at a bunch of people working at a task in
Speaker 1: scene ways in which to make it more efficient. He's
Speaker 1: got that Henry Ford thing going on. I was gonna say, man,
Speaker 1: you know is the worst thing in the world is
Speaker 1: to be like in some sort of uh relationship with
Speaker 1: a person that's good at those things. Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: something like it's just like, man, can you just can
Speaker 1: you just let me put my shoes where they go? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you're probably right, but like, damn, man, I
Speaker 1: don't want to think about it. I just don't want to.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. When I first got married, I remember
Speaker 1: I come back from a show like I'd be gone
Speaker 1: two days. All of a sudden, the drawer that used
Speaker 1: to have the knives and forks now it's towels in,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what am I crazy? Because she didn't
Speaker 1: figure it out a better way for our kitchen to function,
Speaker 1: And just man, can you just okay? I don't have
Speaker 1: an argument as to why this is not. It's actually
Speaker 1: a better idea, but god, you married up. I did.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I really did it. She's much
Speaker 1: more efficient. But sometimes like you're getting all you know,
Speaker 1: Rhoda on me. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just think of all the times Robert can't find things,
Speaker 1: and then we start things late because you can't find things.
Speaker 1: I have started the rebellion against capitalism early in my
Speaker 1: own life by refusing to ever know what I'm doing
Speaker 1: or have a plan. And you know what, it works
Speaker 1: out fine. This is one thank you successful podcast. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you so uick, thank you. So you don't need
Speaker 1: capitalism as something as you have products and services. So
Speaker 1: he was, Yeah, he's a born entrepreneur. He creates a
Speaker 1: bunch of side hustles in order to basically make additional
Speaker 1: cash to fund the expansion of their mind to buy
Speaker 1: their claims. Uh. The probably most successful of these was
Speaker 1: he bought an ice machine so he could sell ice
Speaker 1: cream during the vicious summer months in southern Oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is brilliant. Yeah, that's brilliant, like the fucking middle
Speaker 1: of like the the dead middle of like southern Africa,
Speaker 1: like people working in the summer on a mine and
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, it'll do well, here's a fucking
Speaker 1: ice machine. You remember, you remember, uh early like two thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, teena lever earlier at his decade, like when
Speaker 1: the one to one model was like like the Tom's model, right,
Speaker 1: was all the all the all the rage I saw
Speaker 1: this video was going around. Its hilarious. I think those
Speaker 1: dudes make commercials now but like they were totally dressed
Speaker 1: like the guy that started Tom's and they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be in Africa doing this one to one thing
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, I never forget it. Man.
Speaker 1: I I had this idea where um I was out
Speaker 1: in Africa. We were on a missions trip and I
Speaker 1: just thought to myself, where can I get a smoothie?
Speaker 1: And he goes, He's like, I never forget it. The
Speaker 1: the tribe said what's a smoothie? And he was like,
Speaker 1: and that's when I knew we want to do one
Speaker 1: to one smoothie machines. So their whole business model was
Speaker 1: if you buy a smoothie machine, they will provide one
Speaker 1: for a tribe in Africa. I mean, I kind of
Speaker 1: love the idea of like hunter gatherers but with a
Speaker 1: smoothie machine, because like everybody enjoys a smooth because they're all, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all you need is like yeah, ice, milk and
Speaker 1: running water. I'm sure they can get that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're good, right, smoothie machines. And they did totally shot
Speaker 1: at like what those conversives were, like, you know, he
Speaker 1: got this white ladies, really nice white person handing this
Speaker 1: smoothie to like the smiling African and then the guy
Speaker 1: a little African boys holding They're like what do what
Speaker 1: is one kid just dragging it by the power cord? Right?
Speaker 1: Just do that. They're putting rocks on the inside, Like
Speaker 1: what do I do with this? Right? Anyway has with everybody.
Speaker 1: But anyway, hey, this boo was brilliant. Sell ice cream,
Speaker 1: Sell ice cream? Yeah, sell ice cream? Um smart smart guy.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah. Now, when he first arrived at Kimberly,
Speaker 1: he described the site of this, this hill that's the cut,
Speaker 1: like this is the center of the mining claim, as
Speaker 1: looking like a giant ant hill covered in thousands of
Speaker 1: scurrying black shapes. And he predicted in this turned out
Speaker 1: to be very accurate that one day the hill would
Speaker 1: be completely dug away and replaced by a giant hole
Speaker 1: in the itself. And he was completely right about this. Um.
Speaker 1: If you go to Kimberly today, you can go visit
Speaker 1: the Big Hole, which many suggest, it's not confirmed, but
Speaker 1: many suggest is the largest pit ever dug by human hands.
Speaker 1: And if you look up the photos of this, it's
Speaker 1: astonishing it is. It is a really big hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, I didn't know. You can still go man, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right. Yeah, because they just dug They dug so
Speaker 1: deep into the ground to get all the diamonds. And
Speaker 1: then there's there's this giant hole. Nobody's gonna fill it up.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do? H what are you gonna
Speaker 1: do after? Now we have a hole in our town? Yeah, guys, Hey,
Speaker 1: now hey look capitalism, Hey, come see the hole comes
Speaker 1: hole a hole. Let's monetize it. Yeah, you're you're I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do your sometimes your old timey like newspaper
Speaker 1: guy voice, Come see the whole. I can't do it, dude.
Speaker 1: The natives could never have dugging a hole this big, Like,
Speaker 1: look at this hole. Only white men could make a
Speaker 1: hole this big. That's it. There, it is so this.
Speaker 1: The year after Cecil arrived, the popular lation of diggers
Speaker 1: in Kimberly swelled to as many as about fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: and at first most of them operated independent claims finding
Speaker 1: diamonds because it required nothing more than hand tools. Right,
Speaker 1: you were just kind of digging and like running water
Speaker 1: through it and with oil and I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a process, but it's pretty simple and it
Speaker 1: didn't require heavy equipment UM. But as these claims were
Speaker 1: found more profitable, and as the digging got deeper, eventually,
Speaker 1: like you started turning it into a big hole, and
Speaker 1: that becomes too much of a process for small independent
Speaker 1: diggers to be a part of. So things start getting
Speaker 1: consolidated UM and people start abandoning in it too, because
Speaker 1: there's a period when you're mining diamonds where you strip
Speaker 1: away like the surface level and it looks like you're done.
Speaker 1: And Cecil and a number of other like smarter, well,
Speaker 1: I guess like just more intuitive guys understood that no, no no,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be more diamonds underneath that. But we need
Speaker 1: to be we need to build larger companies to buy
Speaker 1: larger equipment to go deeper and extract those UM. So
Speaker 1: he starts investing his money into buying up individual minds
Speaker 1: and adding them to he and Herbert's claims, and the
Speaker 1: process started slowly, took years and years and years UM,
Speaker 1: and it was a time that Cecil would remember fondly,
Speaker 1: this like sixteen seventeen year period where he's kind of
Speaker 1: building the foundation of it would become his empire. UM.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy two, when he's about a year into
Speaker 1: this process. Um, he's a very happy guy. His only
Speaker 1: frustration came from the fact that he wasn't able to
Speaker 1: go back to Oxford. As Rottenberg writes, quote, Rhodes may
Speaker 1: have continued dreaming of a university education and of life
Speaker 1: as a professional, probably a barrister, but these would have
Speaker 1: been dreams with utilitarian motives. For the moment, he was
Speaker 1: content to have land of your own, horses of your own,
Speaker 1: and shooting when you like, and a lot of black
Speaker 1: inwards to do what you like with apart from the
Speaker 1: fact of making money. So that's his attitude. Yeah, there is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah. And again, the the the ease with
Speaker 1: which he could kind of talk about how happy he
Speaker 1: was probably had something to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: his parents were backing him, um and would continue to
Speaker 1: do it so he never had to like he he
Speaker 1: had this, He had a cushion, you know, that's the Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a where it's like, it's really not a
Speaker 1: risk because if all else fails, you could just go
Speaker 1: back to you just go back to England, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, And and metaphorically and quite literally just
Speaker 1: leave a hole in Africa and just and just you
Speaker 1: just go back home like, well it was fun. I
Speaker 1: guess it didn't you know whatever, you know, And and
Speaker 1: that like knowing that it's like it makes the the
Speaker 1: it's it's you gamified like it's a video game now.
Speaker 1: So it's like, this is fun building an empire, building
Speaker 1: an industry. It's fun because if it if it fails,
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh, it's like a video game. Just
Speaker 1: hit the reset button and start over. Don't save it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it just start over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the thing that you like, I enjoy. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know if this impulse is is coated
Speaker 1: in white dudes socially or if or if there's there's
Speaker 1: something deeper to it. But like the only video games
Speaker 1: that I play our games where you you build an
Speaker 1: invir you you like, build like cities or countries, and
Speaker 1: you like, you know, it's all about expansion and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. Um and I you know, I I
Speaker 1: feel that impulse and I get to play video games
Speaker 1: about it. Uh. I suspect if I had been raised
Speaker 1: in Cecil's time, in the culture he did, I probably
Speaker 1: would have done some some fucking imperialism. Probably man I mean,
Speaker 1: and it's like, who could blame you, you you know, because
Speaker 1: you could, but I do think, um, I find and
Speaker 1: I mean, you've joked about it a few times about
Speaker 1: like starting a cult, you know, and the first time
Speaker 1: I heard you quote it, i't talk about it. I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I have imagined often building a culture
Speaker 1: from scratch, and I'm like, well, I mean that's what
Speaker 1: it is. And I'm like, I guess essentially a cult
Speaker 1: is just a small culture. And in my head, I'm like,
Speaker 1: imagining the thing and making it up would be so
Speaker 1: much more fun than running it, you know. So when
Speaker 1: I see dudes like like this, that's like, yo, no,
Speaker 1: let's figure out how to do this consolidated thing doing
Speaker 1: the thing. And it's like I start, Okay, we did it,
Speaker 1: but now you gotta maintain it. Then you're like, damn,
Speaker 1: that's a drag. You know, Well let me go start
Speaker 1: another one, you know, and then you start another business
Speaker 1: and then you go because because the building the thing's fun.
Speaker 1: So I just think about that, like even if I
Speaker 1: was gonna, you know, I would love to just like
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm everybody on Tuesday nights, we sit
Speaker 1: in a circle and you have to drink uh you know,
Speaker 1: green tea specifically only with your left hand at five
Speaker 1: forty two pm. That's the rule in our cult. And
Speaker 1: I just think that, like making up stuff like that
Speaker 1: just seems fun, you know, So in him, yeah, figuring
Speaker 1: out the best way two make this thing work and
Speaker 1: then shoot shoot shoot messages back to his brothers and
Speaker 1: his family like suck it. I'm living out here, y'all
Speaker 1: send Yeah, he because you thought I couldn't do it,
Speaker 1: check this out. I'm winning, you know. I could see
Speaker 1: the psychology developing again. Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. Um,
Speaker 1: I get you know. And this is kind of one
Speaker 1: at where I land on like thank God for video games,
Speaker 1: but also like I don't know, like this is something
Speaker 1: I wrestle with, like if I can be completely honest
Speaker 1: with you, like part of why I moved out to
Speaker 1: the West is I want to own land. I want
Speaker 1: to buy I want to buy a chunk of land
Speaker 1: that that feels wild to me and get to live
Speaker 1: on it and roam around. And there's certainly conversations to
Speaker 1: be had about how ethical that is. Um. It's a
Speaker 1: powerful desire and it's coated in me as is as
Speaker 1: is finding romance and things that I know are not romantic,
Speaker 1: like the like like like The Cowboy or like The
Speaker 1: Agent Exploration, UM, which is like I was reading those
Speaker 1: books when I was like five years old, and you know,
Speaker 1: I I've gone out of my way to educate myself
Speaker 1: about the reality. But you never quite fully break that spell. Nah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't help but be a like and products not
Speaker 1: the right word, but but yeah, like you are influenced
Speaker 1: by the era you're in and you can't not be
Speaker 1: what you are. So yeah, now I feel I think
Speaker 1: about that when we talk about reparations with black people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, where's our forty acres in a mule?
Speaker 1: And you turn right over to your indigenous friend that
Speaker 1: goes like where they've gonna give you land? It's not
Speaker 1: there's like you know what I'm saying to you, like
Speaker 1: a yeah gang, yeah, yeah, you say anyway, yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's a I don't know, there's a good conversation to
Speaker 1: be had in um condemning things that are bad, like imperialism,
Speaker 1: and also understanding the the extent to which we're all
Speaker 1: products of this system, so that we can have forgiveness
Speaker 1: for each other. When people realize they've been wrong, you know, dude,
Speaker 1: collect offering. That's that was That was disarming, right, there's
Speaker 1: a collect offer and now was good? All right? So
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three he returned to Britain or England
Speaker 1: or whatever. People always yell at me for calling it
Speaker 1: one or the other. His purpose here was twofold to
Speaker 1: take care of his ailing mother, who died the next year.
Speaker 1: He was very sad and to return to his education.
Speaker 1: He applied to Oxford because a degree at Oxford would
Speaker 1: mark him out as an Englishman of distinction. But he
Speaker 1: failed the entrance exam and so we had to ask
Speaker 1: a family friend who was a graduate to use his
Speaker 1: influence with the school to get Cecil admission again. He
Speaker 1: always has help earning the things that he gets planned
Speaker 1: B baby, who says you can't plan B I'm white.
Speaker 1: So for most of the next decade, Cecil would switch
Speaker 1: between summer semesters at Oxford, and he takes some years
Speaker 1: off in between. It's not every year, and winters in Africa,
Speaker 1: a scene to the expansion of what was becoming a
Speaker 1: mining empire. He initially funded his education by the money
Speaker 1: his dad had set aside for it. But as he
Speaker 1: and Herbert's business expanded, he was able to pay his
Speaker 1: own way through Oxford. He was very proud of this um.
Speaker 1: He was not a good student, and he was regularly
Speaker 1: in trouble for failing to attend lectures and not doing
Speaker 1: the reading that he was ordered to do. It seems
Speaker 1: like most of his time at school was spent at
Speaker 1: fancy parties making connections. He was always careful to make
Speaker 1: sure everyone knew how wealthy he had become, generally by
Speaker 1: carrying a box of diamonds with him wherever he went. God,
Speaker 1: you imagine pulling up to the frat party with Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, this guy is so stereotypical white male privilege.
Speaker 1: But then you were like, oh no, no no, But
Speaker 1: also no, no, no, let me let me dial this
Speaker 1: up a bit. There's like, yo, there are things that
Speaker 1: just like I like we just said, being gracious with
Speaker 1: each other and understanding that we're all products. That is
Speaker 1: saying gulage. There are parts of me that like deeply
Speaker 1: admires what he just explained right now that like equivalent
Speaker 1: though of showing a frat party with a box of diamonds,
Speaker 1: like the biggest that is the greatest flex. I've ever
Speaker 1: dude looking around diamonds. Yeah, playwood diamonds, keep pocket diamonds
Speaker 1: like up chicks diamonds. I don't even need these diamonds.
Speaker 1: I don't even need these. I got a whole field
Speaker 1: of them in Africa for which I spent my winters
Speaker 1: because London is cold down here. Yeah, you diamonds like diamonds.
Speaker 1: There's a part of me that like and that you
Speaker 1: ain't got a Really I'm going to Oxford literally for
Speaker 1: the flex because I don't have to care. It's like
Speaker 1: and they don't even do the work. I han't even
Speaker 1: the work. I hate him like he stands for everything
Speaker 1: that I hate. But also that's that's that this style
Speaker 1: that's flag is just my first year of teaching. I
Speaker 1: never think it was my first year of teaching. There
Speaker 1: was a little eleventh graders, which was crazy because I
Speaker 1: was like maybe four years old, but like, uh I
Speaker 1: this kid, this was like eBay time, right, So this
Speaker 1: kid was selling these like paint guns on eBay, you know,
Speaker 1: and I remember being like, first of all, how do
Speaker 1: you know how to do this? Number one? And number two?
Speaker 1: Where do you keep him? He was like, oh, they
Speaker 1: I never get them they don't. I don't have them.
Speaker 1: I just they don't come to me. I buy them
Speaker 1: and then sell them. And then this little dude will
Speaker 1: show up late because he was working the German stock market.
Speaker 1: Eleventh grader, and I was like, if this fool never
Speaker 1: turns in an assignment, I don't blame him. I don't
Speaker 1: blame you for not taking high school serious. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: fuck it, yeah exactly, Like he knows. He has this
Speaker 1: thing that you have to have to be truly successful
Speaker 1: within a society, which is knowing that all of the
Speaker 1: conventions of your society or bullshit. And Cecil Rhodes knows
Speaker 1: that Cecil Rhodes understands that it's all it's all a dumb,
Speaker 1: bullshitty grift. And like he will, he will refuse to
Speaker 1: do work, and then his like his friends at school
Speaker 1: will be like the dean's gonna kick like you're gonna
Speaker 1: get kicked out of school. And he has a number
Speaker 1: of meetings with them, and they never do and he
Speaker 1: knows they're not going to because they know that he's
Speaker 1: going to be extremely wealthy and powerful and they want
Speaker 1: to be able to brag that he's an alumni. So
Speaker 1: when he sits exactly. So when I sit down in
Speaker 1: this meeting about you about to expel me, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna put my backpack down and just let a diamond roll,
Speaker 1: oh you know when, and let you tell me so
Speaker 1: tell me, so, tell me how, tell me how this goes?
Speaker 1: Excuse me pick up lines like what? How? Well, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about his romantic life a little bit in a moment.
Speaker 1: So does women really? Well? Is he just a standing guy?
Speaker 1: Is that what I should be expelled? No, he doesn't,
Speaker 1: he doesn't. He doesn't even think about women. Um, he's
Speaker 1: he's again, he's he's he's he's gay. Well we're talking
Speaker 1: about this in a little bit, but yeah, he's not.
Speaker 1: He has no interest in women. Um yeah, so does
Speaker 1: a slight turn of events? All right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a bit, because there's some
Speaker 1: things to say about it. Um. I don't want to,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people talk about it too much
Speaker 1: because I don't think it's that big of a thing.
Speaker 1: But there's some areas in which it impacts kind of
Speaker 1: other things that he does. I still want to know
Speaker 1: what his lines were. Well, we'll talk about that too briefly.
Speaker 1: I mean, even it's gay or straight you walk into
Speaker 1: a party with some diamonds that you're just playing around with,
Speaker 1: shaking him like dice for you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So uh. Once a classmate and this is back to
Speaker 1: the story about his diamond box, a classmate reported quote
Speaker 1: when he condescended to attend to lecture with which proved
Speaker 1: uninteresting to him, he pulled out his box and showed
Speaker 1: the gyms to his friends, and then it was upset
Speaker 1: and diamonds were scattered on the floor, and the lecturer
Speaker 1: looked up asking what was the cause of the disturbance
Speaker 1: and received the reply, it is only rhads and his diamonds.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I hate this guy being the professor just
Speaker 1: look at at this like, yeah, ah, this little prick,
Speaker 1: you little prick. Yeah, damn, one of those rocks is
Speaker 1: my year's salary. Yeah, he's probably like that guy, that
Speaker 1: guy that was viral on social media, the guy who
Speaker 1: salts the meat, remember that salt. Yeah, he was probably
Speaker 1: die yeah that guy that's where yeah. Yes, So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what it took for Cecil
Speaker 1: to get those diamonds so right before leaving for his
Speaker 1: first turn of Oxford. Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, none
Speaker 1: of it is ever so. Right before he left for Oxford,
Speaker 1: Cecil and his brother Herbert moved most of their operations
Speaker 1: to a new set of claims in a mind named
Speaker 1: De Beers. Uh. Yeah, that's where this story is going.
Speaker 1: So if you want an exhaustive account of every blow
Speaker 1: and play, you can read Rottenberg's biography, The Founder. The
Speaker 1: short of it is that Cecil came to own the
Speaker 1: entire mind, and he didn't buy it at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: he convinced a number of investors, many of whom were
Speaker 1: like men in and around his age group, ambitious younger guys,
Speaker 1: to invest and he had He's noted as having this
Speaker 1: superhuman ability to convince primarily other white dudes, to work
Speaker 1: towards his vision. He's able to get people to buy
Speaker 1: into a vision and give him full control of achieving it.
Speaker 1: That is his gift, that's his his real talent. Because
Speaker 1: he's not using all of his own money for this,
Speaker 1: he's convincing other people to pay and let him run things.
Speaker 1: Freaking brilliant dude. Yeah, and he's very good at that.
Speaker 1: Starting in the mid eighteen seventies, he began collecting a
Speaker 1: group of mostly young men around him, and to these
Speaker 1: most trusted acolytes, he would reveal what had become his
Speaker 1: true goal, the creation of a secret society aimed at
Speaker 1: furthering the spread of the British Empire over the entire world.
Speaker 1: The first people he collected for this grand endeavor were
Speaker 1: co investors in his mining operation, men with money and
Speaker 1: influence that he welded with the power of his dreams
Speaker 1: into what essentially functioned as a fanatically loyal board of
Speaker 1: directors for his business. They were so devoted to Roads
Speaker 1: and his goals that any in the Cape colony began
Speaker 1: referring to these men as the apostles. Wow. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, after just six years in business, Roads
Speaker 1: had accrued in a state worth about ten thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: which did not make him super rich, but he was
Speaker 1: very comfortable, and it was enough that he wrote his
Speaker 1: first will, which listed his wish that all his possessions
Speaker 1: go quote to and for the establishment, promotion, and development
Speaker 1: of a secret society. The true aim and object whereof
Speaker 1: would be for the extension of British rule throughout the world.
Speaker 1: Rhodes went on went so far as to specify that
Speaker 1: he wanted the society to ensure the spread of British rule,
Speaker 1: to quote, the entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land,
Speaker 1: the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyphrus and
Speaker 1: candy A, the whole of South America, the islands of
Speaker 1: the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole
Speaker 1: of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan,
Speaker 1: and the ultimate recovery of the United States as an
Speaker 1: integral part of the British Empire. Yo, Yeah, I am
Speaker 1: so glad, he added that last part. Yes, that's gotta
Speaker 1: be a that's gotta be a freaking thorn in your flesh.
Speaker 1: He hates that the US left the empire. Yeahn't believe
Speaker 1: we lost this. Yeah, he's very frustrated by that. So
Speaker 1: the very next year, in eighteen seventy seven, while he's
Speaker 1: at Oxford, Rhodes published what he called His Confession of Faith.
Speaker 1: Now he picked that title because by this point, years
Speaker 1: of ruling over black African servants and workers and extracting
Speaker 1: the wealth of their homeland for his own benefit felt
Speaker 1: so right to him that he considered imperialism to be
Speaker 1: his religion. When he's saying confession of faith, he's literally
Speaker 1: saying this is this is my God, this goal is
Speaker 1: my God. Um. So he opened the statement by noting
Speaker 1: that he did not care about marriage, he didn't care
Speaker 1: about having a family, and he didn't even care about
Speaker 1: attaining personal wealth. The sole aim that interested him was
Speaker 1: the furtherance of the Anglo Saxon race. Quote. I contend
Speaker 1: that we are the finest in the world, and that
Speaker 1: the more of the world we inhabit, the better it
Speaker 1: is for the human race. Just fancy those parts of
Speaker 1: the world that are at present inhabited by the most
Speaker 1: despicable specimens of human beings. What an alteration there would
Speaker 1: be if they were brought under the Anglo Saxon influence.
Speaker 1: Look again that the extra employment of a new country
Speaker 1: added to our dominion gives. I contend that every acre
Speaker 1: added to our territory means in the future birth of
Speaker 1: some more of the English race who otherwise would not
Speaker 1: be brought into existence. He's a white supremacist, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people were you can talk about like
Speaker 1: there's again, I don't want to like get too into
Speaker 1: the birth the invention of the white race, because that
Speaker 1: is a story I want to I do want to tell,
Speaker 1: but he is. He might be the first modern white supremacist,
Speaker 1: the first proud boy style white supremacist where that Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that there's this and it's crazy,
Speaker 1: like how you know this is that intermingling. I would say,
Speaker 1: like you don't see a lot of this stuff in
Speaker 1: Christian literature until about now, where like this like intermingling
Speaker 1: of yeah, this is our mandate on the planet from
Speaker 1: our maker, like we are we're helping, this is what
Speaker 1: God wants for us. You know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cecil's modern defenders will often bring up like things he
Speaker 1: said about believing that black people are are are inherently
Speaker 1: the same as white people. It's a cultural problem and
Speaker 1: as as soon as they fully embrace Anglo Saxon culture,
Speaker 1: then I think they deserve to be treated equally. And
Speaker 1: let's say, like, Nos, he wasn't racist. He had beliefs
Speaker 1: about like he thought that he wanted to. It was
Speaker 1: just a cultural thing for him, and that is that's
Speaker 1: why I say, I think he might be the first
Speaker 1: that I've come across really truly modern white supremacist. He's
Speaker 1: a white supremacist in the way that the Proud Boys are. Were, like,
Speaker 1: they've got black members, they've get get Pacific Islanders, they
Speaker 1: have have Latino members, But their whole thing is their
Speaker 1: Western chauvinists. They yeah, exactly. They believe that the West
Speaker 1: is best and that as long as you buy into that,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what color you are. And that's Cecil,
Speaker 1: that's Cecil Roads. Yeah. And he's writing this ship out
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven when most races are much cruder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're yeah, and we're still like suffering from those
Speaker 1: writings to this day. Yes. Now, Like all arch imperialists,
Speaker 1: Cecil attempted to justify his mad ambition on humanitarian grounds,
Speaker 1: lamenting that if the Empire had not lost the United States,
Speaker 1: it would have been able to stop the Crimean War
Speaker 1: by denying both sides money and arms. CRIMEA Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. Good, I appreciate that. Uh yeah, what it
Speaker 1: really was, Yeah again naked white supremacy. Roads lamented that
Speaker 1: secret societies of the day, like the Masons, didn't direct
Speaker 1: their wealth and power towards a clear aim quote, why
Speaker 1: should we not form a secret society with but one object?
Speaker 1: The furtherance of the British Empire, and the bringing of
Speaker 1: the whole and civilized world under British rule, for the
Speaker 1: recovery of the United States, and for the making of
Speaker 1: the Anglo Saxon race. But one empire. What a dream.
Speaker 1: But yet it is probable, it is possible. I once
Speaker 1: had it argued by a fellow in my own college.
Speaker 1: I am sorry to own it, by an Englishman, that
Speaker 1: it was a good thing for us to have lost
Speaker 1: the United States. There are some subjects on which there
Speaker 1: can be no arguments, and to an Englishman this is
Speaker 1: one of them. But even from an American's point of view,
Speaker 1: just picture what they have lost. Look at their government.
Speaker 1: Are not the frauds that nearly come before the public
Speaker 1: view would disgrace to any country, but especially There's, which
Speaker 1: is the finest in the world. Yeah, I mean, you're
Speaker 1: not wrong. All of our politicians have always been frauds.
Speaker 1: You get that correctly. But you had a king like like,
Speaker 1: come on, dude, Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong, but you
Speaker 1: can't say that. Yeah, not wrong, but you're not wrong,
Speaker 1: but you're not better either, Like, so go funk yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah it takes one and no one. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: He went on to express a desire to the entire
Speaker 1: continent of Africa, not just under British rule, but filled
Speaker 1: with English settlers. Africa is still lying ready for us,
Speaker 1: and it is our duty to take it. It is
Speaker 1: our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory.
Speaker 1: And we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes.
Speaker 1: That more territory means simply more of the Anglo Saxon race,
Speaker 1: more of the best, the most human, most honorable race
Speaker 1: the world possesses, the most human. The thing that I
Speaker 1: still can't get my wrap my brain around, especially from
Speaker 1: writing's like this. I'm like, y'all ain't invented sewage. Yeah
Speaker 1: you in there, Yeah, y'all. Still you still throwing human
Speaker 1: ship in the street and don't know why you sick?
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying, like this, how are
Speaker 1: you gonna tell me? Yeah, so you carry smell things
Speaker 1: because you don't bathe. I'm like, why are you telling?
Speaker 1: Why do you think I'll give this? In Cecil's defense,
Speaker 1: he was known and it was odd in this period
Speaker 1: that he bathed every day, even when he was on
Speaker 1: campaign in the woods. He had like a bath taken
Speaker 1: around with him that his black servants filled up for
Speaker 1: him and stuff because he had the wealth to bath
Speaker 1: of every day. Had the wealth debate, I'm like, you
Speaker 1: seen have you seen everyone? Yeah to rest y'all like yeah.
Speaker 1: So the secret society Roads proposed sounds almost more like
Speaker 1: a precursor to the c I A a handpicked group
Speaker 1: of ambitious and talented young men who would dedicate their
Speaker 1: whole lives to this cause. When he actually started inducting
Speaker 1: more men into this society, he tended to restrict his
Speaker 1: members from marrying and starting families so they would have
Speaker 1: no priorities before the empire. And this is where we
Speaker 1: talk about Roads of sexuality because he himself never married.
Speaker 1: He expressed repeatedly that he was too busy to do so,
Speaker 1: and everyone pretty much agrees that he was gay. Um now,
Speaker 1: this was illegal at the time. You can just ask
Speaker 1: Oscar Wilde that. But men of means and stature, it
Speaker 1: was impossible to be poor and gay pretty much because
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd probably be killed by a lot of
Speaker 1: like your right because it's very bigoted at the time,
Speaker 1: or you'd have to keep it completely secret. And yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: if you were rich, you could be gay and most
Speaker 1: people would know it. Like Rhodes is gay, it's illegal
Speaker 1: to be gay. Everyone in British society knows that he's gay.
Speaker 1: He brings these South these white South African boys back
Speaker 1: to England with him, these younger men, and he takes
Speaker 1: them to parties with him. Um is my is my assistant? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: and there's he's he's even more blatant than that. There's
Speaker 1: one story I heard about him where essentially like he's
Speaker 1: he's at a party with this young, rude South African
Speaker 1: boy and like the guy hosting the fancy British person
Speaker 1: hosting the party says Rhodes, I can't invite you to
Speaker 1: parties anymore if you're gonna bring boys like this around,
Speaker 1: Like he almost broke my hand with his hand and shake,
Speaker 1: and Rhodes said something along the side of the lines
Speaker 1: of you should see how hard he bucks. It's like
Speaker 1: a mule um. Like so he's he's not super coy, right,
Speaker 1: but I like I got pocket diamonds. You say, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that a pretty high and oddly
Speaker 1: high number of British imperial icons of specifically this period
Speaker 1: were gay, or some of them were They're called gay
Speaker 1: a lot, but I think it might be more accurate
Speaker 1: to say they were kind of romantic a sexuals, where
Speaker 1: they had these very strong, very clearly romantic relationships with
Speaker 1: men that they probably never had sex with, but they
Speaker 1: would be inseparable and it was just like a thing
Speaker 1: in imperialism. I just feel like, statistically speaking, it's impossible
Speaker 1: that there's any less amount of gay people there. Now
Speaker 1: you know I'm saying, but yeah, there's a reason why.
Speaker 1: There are some reasons why they're probably overrepresented within sort
Speaker 1: of the subset of the English population that's doing the
Speaker 1: imperialist ship. Some of that is that, like we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, if you're gay in a majority straighten in
Speaker 1: a society where it's legal to be gay, you fundamentally
Speaker 1: see the world differently, and that confers certain advantages you
Speaker 1: are able to, perhaps especially since a lot of the
Speaker 1: other men doing this might be gay, build stronger, more
Speaker 1: emotional relationships with them, um, which leads to more loyalty,
Speaker 1: which means you have this this loyal band of like
Speaker 1: people who you can work with to accomplish these goals.
Speaker 1: It also means that, like you probably find the culture
Speaker 1: back home stifling, and you want to get out to
Speaker 1: a place where there are fewer rules and where you
Speaker 1: can you can get away with living being the kind
Speaker 1: of person that you are. There's a quote from Ruyard
Speaker 1: Kipling's poem Um, one of his poems about imperialism, that
Speaker 1: I think was about, Uh, I'm forgetting the name of
Speaker 1: it now, but the lion is um. Send We send
Speaker 1: me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like
Speaker 1: the worst, where there ain't no tin commandments, and a
Speaker 1: man can raise a thirst, right so that there's You
Speaker 1: come across this a lot, and I think it's just
Speaker 1: because I think there's probably a number of reasons for it. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is a thing about cecil, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk a whole lot more about it
Speaker 1: because I don't think it has all that much of
Speaker 1: a bearing other than to the extent that it kind
Speaker 1: of forms him into the man that he is. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah. One of the men he brought into his
Speaker 1: scheme was a position named Leander Jamison, and he recalled
Speaker 1: that as early as eighteen seventy eight, Roads had formed
Speaker 1: the idea of doing great work for the overcrowded British
Speaker 1: public at home by opening up fresh markets for their manufactures.
Speaker 1: As his business had expanded, so too had British colonial
Speaker 1: possessions in Africa. And Cecil noticed that when the Empire grew,
Speaker 1: unemployment back home went down, an average income went up.
Speaker 1: Things got better for the average people in his country
Speaker 1: because they were getting worse for the average people in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world. Um. Yeah, So he recognizes
Speaker 1: this and he sees this as like a fundamentally positive thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And other these other white people that he's gathering him
Speaker 1: to himself at the time, they're deeply impressed and moved
Speaker 1: by his belief in the destiny of the Anglo Saxon race. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's what he's able to get them to buy into.
Speaker 1: That's why they put so much trust in so much
Speaker 1: their of their wealth and roads. Um. And it's it's
Speaker 1: his biographer Rotberg kind of compares a lot of what
Speaker 1: Cecil's talking about in this time to to Hitler's concept
Speaker 1: of levin realm um living space, right, And it is
Speaker 1: very similar. You can trace the birth of these ideas um,
Speaker 1: or at least the the birth of these ideas as
Speaker 1: a written down conception, because they'd certainly been pursued earlier,
Speaker 1: uh to sec you know, and and he has British
Speaker 1: imperialism had a massive impact on Hitler. And in fact,
Speaker 1: he would he would constantly talk about both the United
Speaker 1: States and the British Empire and the land that they
Speaker 1: had to for their people to move in as part
Speaker 1: of why he wanted Eastern Europe, why he wanted Russia
Speaker 1: and Ukraine in Poland. Um, because he wanted the same
Speaker 1: thing for the Germans that he saw these other empires getting. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it is worth like he he definitely rhodes
Speaker 1: Is is talking early about what will become these concepts
Speaker 1: that we recognize as key to to to fascism. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: now I think, yeah, it's it's it's it's interesting. And
Speaker 1: rhodes Is also while he's kind of laying some of
Speaker 1: the intellectual foundations for the what will become fascism, he's
Speaker 1: also laying a lot of the intellectual foundations for the
Speaker 1: system of global capitalism that we live under today. This
Speaker 1: this idea that you can have a whole world united
Speaker 1: in mass resource extraction and trade in After sixteen years
Speaker 1: of building up his business holdings and a network of
Speaker 1: loyal Toady's Rhodes amalgamated all of these minds that he
Speaker 1: had and that his friends had accrued, and he formed
Speaker 1: them into a single corporation. De Beers amalgamated minds. So
Speaker 1: this is the de Beers corporation is birthed. Now he's
Speaker 1: the first head of it. Uh, he's the chairman of
Speaker 1: De Beers. Now. In short order, de Beers swallowed up
Speaker 1: almost the entire diamond trade in Southern Africa. And as
Speaker 1: they gobbled up more and more minds, Roads streamlined the
Speaker 1: mining process, killing off the old way of diggers and
Speaker 1: diamond booms, and refashioned the whole industry into a precise
Speaker 1: engine that ran on human misery. And I found a
Speaker 1: paper from an economic student at the University of Boulder
Speaker 1: that I think sums up what happens very well, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from that now. Rhodes is colored workers
Speaker 1: were oppressed by his white managers and impaired by the
Speaker 1: atrocious living conditions. Once Rhodes had his miners, he and
Speaker 1: his British colonial authorities proclaimed a pass law in Kimberly.
Speaker 1: Black workers had to possess a document that stated their
Speaker 1: right to employment, and at the end of shifts, white
Speaker 1: policemen stripped the colored miners nude and probe their orifices
Speaker 1: for stolen diamonds. This indignity, however, was not forced upon
Speaker 1: the white laborers. To distinguish the manager's fear of theft,
Speaker 1: the blacks also had to live in prison like compounds
Speaker 1: on site for the length of their contract. De Beers
Speaker 1: paid its colored workers in average of ninety seven fifty
Speaker 1: per month, while the whites were paid in average of
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty dollars, and to break even, the
Speaker 1: laborers needed to make it at least a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty dollars monthly. So he comes up with this idea
Speaker 1: of amalgamating, streamlining and then getting this workforce that you
Speaker 1: have total control of in the same way that like
Speaker 1: those those a lot of those factory workers and Shins
Speaker 1: and China making our iPhones are and you keep them
Speaker 1: locked into a cycle of near poverty, forcing them to
Speaker 1: live in these compounds that he could control. Um he
Speaker 1: basically succeeded, as de Beer takes off in re enslaving
Speaker 1: a chunk of the black African populace for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the British empire. Um and this plan worked marvelously.
Speaker 1: In a few years, de Beers controlled between ninety and
Speaker 1: of the planet's diamond supply. Yeah, and then they cracked
Speaker 1: open a bunch of de Beers. Yeah, I'm sorry, that's
Speaker 1: too account at frat parties where he was just like
Speaker 1: frat parties, diamond diamond He's like diamonds, popping a top
Speaker 1: with his diamonds. All right, Well, prop, that's the end
Speaker 1: of part one. There's so much more of this guy
Speaker 1: to go, but that's what we've got time. Um boy,
Speaker 1: this has gone on a bit. You want you want
Speaker 1: to plug your plug doables? Man, Yeah, I do, And
Speaker 1: I also want to just diamonds are forever. Diamonds are forever.
Speaker 1: That's said the entire time. Yeah, and that I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's after his time. But he sets up
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that make the diamond trade
Speaker 1: what it is. Like we'll talk about this more at
Speaker 1: the end, but like blood diamonds are a thing because
Speaker 1: of cecil roads. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Man,
Speaker 1: That's what I was like, That's where I would like
Speaker 1: when you started the thing, That's what I was preparing
Speaker 1: myself for. Like we're gonna get to blood diamonds pretty soon. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that the end. We're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about it enough because there's so much of roads
Speaker 1: to talk about. And he's not the only he starts
Speaker 1: the process that leads to the creation of blood diamonds.
Speaker 1: There are a number of other men over decades who
Speaker 1: are like responsible for bringing us all down that path.
Speaker 1: But we will talk some about that at the end. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: prop hit pop dot com and prop hit pops all
Speaker 1: my um handles my social media. I just uh announced
Speaker 1: a not a blood coffee a but a real coffee
Speaker 1: UM collaborations company called Onyx, where I kind of special
Speaker 1: single origin Ethiopian blend that McGear real nerdy with y'all
Speaker 1: will not blend a single origin Ethiopian um. It's kind
Speaker 1: of tastes like dried pineapple. It's pretty bomb uh and
Speaker 1: in the in in in the spirit of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, Like it's three brothers that own
Speaker 1: the farm. They're born and raised in Ethiopia, one of
Speaker 1: them lives in l A And the fair trade price
Speaker 1: for the bean is a buck fifty per pound, but
Speaker 1: me and Onyx paid nine bucks a pound because we
Speaker 1: believe in supporting real folks. Um, so that's the biggest
Speaker 1: thing I plug right now is I got a coffee
Speaker 1: and if you're into like drinking good coffee, please order. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's ethically sourced and we paid the people. Well
Speaker 1: we're not no Cecil roads. Yeah. Uh, don't be cecil
Speaker 1: Roads in your own life. And don't come after me
Speaker 1: for calling him cecil and cecil and interchangeably. I know
Speaker 1: it's cecil whatever. That's my fault cecil Yeah yeah, fuck it.
Speaker 1: Like basically, I don't. I don't have to respect this
Speaker 1: man enough to pronounce his name. Right. No, No, he
Speaker 1: got enough respect while he was alive and fucking up
Speaker 1: the world. To hell with him, right, and to hell
Speaker 1: with all of you, my beloved listeners. Um no, I
Speaker 1: I thank you for listening. Uh, we'll come back for
Speaker 1: part two, where we'll talk about how he conquered two
Speaker 1: countries just for fun and did some other messed up
Speaker 1: stuff product. Wait, well, no, we love about forty percent
Speaker 1: of you statistically. Yeah,