Rhodes' conspiracy to start a war and profit from it, page 1

Just because he's been dead for a few decades doesn't mean he should be ignored. An entire country was named after him. The previous president of the united states avoided military service during a national draft to fight against the spread of communism by accepting his scholarship and leaving the country. And he planned to make global travel and communication drastically easier with a railroad from the mediterranean to the Horn of Africa.

[size=-6]The Colossus, Rhodes

The Boer War
The reasons for this war are complex. The Boers were primarily dutch, tho eventually including some german, flemish, and even some french, colonists in what is now South Africa, present long before the british as part of the overall expansion of the dutch merhcants to the far reaches of the globe (new amsterdam, indonesia, china, etc). The word 'boer' is said to stem from their word for 'farmer'. They are stereotypically presented as being a gun-loving, liberty defending, bible-thumping rough and tumble people, and thats good enough for this consideration. They had settled south africa but were being slowly pushed into the interior of the country by the expansion of the british colonies that also were settled there. In one dramatic event in particular, the Long Trek, large masses of them moved to the High Veld, the vast wilderness of south africa, rather than fall under british dominion, founding their own free republics out there. One of the places that they settled and came to live was the Rand Mountain Ranges, of interest to no one at the time. They often clashed with the native hottentots and not-quite-as-native Bantu speaking Zulus, and used them as slave labour.
The british didn't not permit slavery in their territory, and the Boer treatment of Africans offended British sensibilities. Incredible Diamond and gold wealth was also discovered in the Rand Range also. This was an issue in and of itself, and it also resulted in a large number of anglos settling in Boer territory, specifically Johannesburg, where they were called Uitlanders. That meant that there was often agitation throughout the British Colony and the rest of the Empire over the treatment of British ex pats. North of the Boer republics were German African colonies, which also represented a concern for the British, since the Boers might form an alliance with their ethnically similar German neighbhors. Thus British Supremacy in South Africa was also threatened.
Money. The Empire. The treatment abuse of Citizens and Inhuman treatment of other men. Kindling for war, if nothing else.

Rhodes
Rhodes was fabulously wealthy, highly poltical, and utterly ambitious. He lived in Johannesburg for a time, having founded the still operating DeBeers Diamond co. In 1877 he wrote in a work entitled, Confession of Faith

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The idea gleaming and dancing before ones eyes like a will-of-the-wisp at last frames itself into a plan. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream, but yet it is probable, it is possible. I once heard it argued by a fellow in my own college, I am sorry to own it by an Englishman, that it was good thing for us that we have lost the United States. There are some subjects on which there can be no arguments, and to an Englishman this is one of them, but even from an American’s point of view just picture what they have lost, look at their government, are not the frauds that yearly come before the public view a disgrace to any country and especially their’s which is the finest in the world. Would they have occurred had they remained under English rule great as they have become how infinitely greater they would have been with the softening and elevating influences of English rule[...]
To forward such a scheme what a splendid help a secret society would be a society not openly acknowledged but who would work in secret for such an object.[...]What has the main cause of the success of the Romish Church? The fact that every enthusiast, call it if you like every madman finds employment in it. Let us form the same kind of society a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his County. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.[...]In every Colonial legislature the Society should attempt to have its members prepared at all times to vote or speak and advocate the closer union of England and the colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire. The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press for the press rules the mind of the people. The Society should always be searching for members who might by their position in the world by their energies or character forward the object but the ballot and test for admittance should be severe

He started a political career when he enteded into the Parliament of the british Cape Colony. At this time, 1881, the parliament was primarily concerned with the Gun War, wherein they decided that part of Basutholand, a nearby african kingdom, was to be set aside for white settlers.
Rhodes colluded with a friend of his, Starr Jameson, to lead a milita against the free Boer Transvaal Republic, in 1895. The plan was to the Transvaal government, and install one that would be more favourable to Utilander mining and business interests, ie Rhodes.
Prime Minister of the Cape Colony at this time, Rhodes actually confided this plan to the secretary of the British High Commision in South Africa, Graham Bower, swearing him to secrecy. Bower kept the conspiracy a secret from the Commision itself. Graham later stated:

[Rhodes] then told me that the capitalists at Johannesburg had joined forces with the National Union, 9 and that a revolt would take place [...]He also told me that he was going to move the police from Matabeleland to Mafeking, to be available for use if required

The Boers got tipped off early and smashed the insurrection. Rhodes was implicated. However, because of the secrecy involved, his full involvement was not revealed, and he merely had to step down as Prime Minister. Not one to let a little thing like that slow him donw, Rhodes merely focused his attentions on creating the new state of Rhodesia nearby.

A few years afterwards, the Great Boer War broke out, with Rhodes actually trapped in the beseiged diamond city of Kimberly, where, ultimately, he died, no doubt in part from the sinister forces that he had put into play when he set up Jameson's militia. Meanwhile, thousands of others died, the free republics were destroyed, and thousands more Boer civilians were put into Concentration Camps, a 'new' idea picked up from the Spanish.

Rhodes. The original insatiable capitalist warmongering profiteer.