Cecil Rhodes by John FlintReview by: W. G. MillsCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 11, No. 1(1977), pp. 159-160Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/483691 .

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LIVRES/BOOKS 159

devoted to the pursuit of profit. He smugly admits to a lifelong ignorance of "business" (les affaires is a dirty word in his vocabu- lary), and was content to leave the details of commercial activity to underlings. For him, the "real" Africa was the back country bush where colonial officers could keep their hands free of commercial taint and confine themsel- ves to the building of roads and, presumably, the preservation of the African cultural herit- age. In this humanitarian task of course he acknowledges the use of such practices as forced labour, whose abuses he deplored but whose principle he accepted. In the absence of credits, we are told, officials were justified in using what they found, and taxes in kind were well suited to lands with feeble monetary res- ources (p. 125). If there were faults and er- rors, these were always the result of general policy designed by ambitious politicians and rapacious capitalists.

In a memoir, we should value the flaws as well as the strengths for the whole serves as a document, not of what really happened of course, but of what the author wishes had happened: autobiographies are accounts not of all that a writer remembers but only that which he wants to remember. Well written and fast paced, candid yet naive, this work is useful as a measure of the colonial attitudes, not of an atypical progressive as Deschamps would have it, but rather of a conventional, highly successful paternalist.

Myron J. ECHENBERG

Department of History, McGill Universitv

John FLINT, Cecil Rhodes, Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1974, 268p.

Perhaps it is best to start by saying that this book is not a scholarly monograph. Special- ists will be disappointed if they expect to find very much that is new. The book is intended for a more general audience, particularly that audience which is primarily interested in his- tory as biography. These remarks are intend- ed as description not denigration because

Flint has undertaken a formidable task; he has attempted to make a critical evaluation of the Rhodes' legend in an arena and before an au- dience which has tended for so long to be mesmerized by that legend. That Flint is not flogging a dead horse is shown by the outraged review in the Economist, " Look back in ran- cour"- v.260 (17 July 1976), pp. 105-06.

Flint walks a very tight rope. As part of the Library of World Biography series (edited by J. H. Plumb), the format is highly susceptible to the "great man" syndrome. Yet it is Flint's thesis that Rhodes was not a great man by most criteria-even those of the imperialists who have most lionized Rhodes. How does one use the "great man" genre to debunk a particular "great man" legend? One must avoid overstressing the evil done because great villains who appear to divert or shape the flow of events and thus to affect the lives of multitudes also become great men. Thus, Flint is at pains to argue that the anti-imperial- ists (e.g., J. A. Hobson and Leonard Woolf) in their denunciations of Rhodes as the arch- imperialist have accepted the legend and tend- ed to give Rhodes more than his due. Flint tries to show how inflated the legend has been as compared to the man.

Rhodes was ruthless: that is not new and even his most synchophantic biographers have acknowledged that; the evidence of the fiasco surrounding Jameson's Raid was in- escapable. Often, this has been depicted at the fatal flaw in the tragic hero or the desperate blunder of a man harried by the spectre of an early death. However, Flint demonstrates that the Raid was not an aberration ; it was, as they say in modem criminology, a well-es- tablished M.O. (modus operandi).

Flint also analyses the origins and nature of Rhodes' "vision," that much lauded attribute of the legend. More completely than ever be- fore, Flint has exposed the shallowness and somewhat infantile quality of Rhodes' Anglo- Saxon racism. Especially useful is the com- plete text of Rhodes' "Confession of Faith" of 1877 provided in an appendix. There was lit- tle original in this "Confession." Nor was Rhodes unique in his attempts to put the ideas into practice as imperialism. Several others of his generation made careers acting out the in- fantile fantacies of Boy's Own Magazine.

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160 REVUE CANADIENNE DES ETUDES AFRICAINES

Rhodes' idea of the "secret society"' was a bit unusual, but it was an idea borrowed from the Masonic Order.

Rhodes was prominent both as a money- maker and as an expander of the British Em- pire, but there has been considerable debate about which of these aspects was end and which was means. In emphasizing the "Con- fession" and Rhodes' Anglo-Saxon racism, Flint argues, quite correctly I think, that ex- pansion of the empire was the end and money- making one of the most important aspects of the means rather than the other way round as the economic determinists and anti-impe- rialists of the Hobson-type have traditional- ly argued. This is the strongest part of the book.

Later, Flint appears worried that in spite of the shabbiness of Rhodes' Anglo-Saxon ra- cism, this interpretation will tend to perpe- tuate the heroic Rhodes' legend. He emphas- izes that Rhodes was not an imperialist of the Milner, Curzon, Cromer mold as he distrust- ed the "imperial factor" and disliked any meddling or interference from London. "If anything he must be described as a colonial- ist, not an imperialist, in that he dedicated himself to the expansion of the white race in southern Africa." Flint concludes that in the end, even that dedication was secondary to egotism. He depicts Rhodes as a selfish man, who had lost his belief in an after-life and who was trying desperately to achieve immortality in history, especially in the perpetuation of his name in Rhodesia. "Rhodes' ambitions were ambitions for Rhodes." (p. 230)

This argument seems to contradict the ear- lier emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon racism; however, as motives are frequently a mixture of selfishness and altruism, the two arguments are not necessarily incompatible and Flint is correct in arguing that in neither case do they show Rhodes as a great man.

However, Flint has not made adequate use of another counterfoil to the great man theory ; that is, that circumstances and events make the man not vice versa. South African history seems especially apt for that ar- gument. Rhodes was lucky in his timing. Sir Harry Smith was as ruthless, as infantile in his ideas and behavior, and would not take sec- ond place to Rhodes for aggressive expansion-

ism. Yet his activities (1847-1852) were abor- tive. Lord Carnarvon, Frere, Shepstone and company had grand schemes and were willing to do and to dare as much as Rhodes. Their efforts in the 1870s also eventually came to naught. Rhodes' imperial "achievements" were, to a large extent, a product of his times and generation.

Flint does throw a bouquet in the direction of Rhodes' contributions to agriculture and mining in South Africa. Flint concludes the book with a eulogy on the Rhodes trust and the impact of the scholarship programme- "a personal monument to his name of which any man might be proud." But that is a momu- mental irony for as Flint points out, whatever has been accomplished has largely been a re- sult of ignoring many of Rhodes' instructions. As far as can be determined, the scheme has not produced dedicated imperialists; the secret society has not materialized. How would Rhodes feel if he knew ? Not only have blacks and other non-Anglo-Saxons become "Rhodes scholars" but surely the man who al- ways shunned women would find it hellish to see his scholarships awarded to women.

One stunning blooper in the book should be noted. After stating (p. 10) that the Bantu had conquered all of central and eastern Africa by 1500 A.D., Flint continues, "In the sixteenth century they began pushing down into what is now South Africa, just before the Dutch began settlement at the Cape of Good Hope.' This myth, which has long been dear to the hearts of white settlers and Afrikaner nation- alists, has been so thoroughly discredited that it is hard to believe a scholar with Flint's cre- dentials could make such a blunder. However, it is the only major error in the book.

W. G. MILLS

Department of History, St. Mary 's University, Halifax

B. E. HARRELL-BOND, Modern Marriage in Sierra Leone. A Study of the Pro- fessional Group, Mouton, 1975, 369p.

Cet ouvrage tres detaille est le resultat de quatorze mois de terrain, sejour subventionne par I'Universite d'Edinbourgh.

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