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Cecil Rhodes

Cecil John Rhodes (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was an English mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. He and his British South Africa Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895. He also devoted much effort to realising his vision of a Cape to Cairo Railway through British territory. Rhodes set up the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate.

The son of a vicar, Rhodes was born at Netteswell House, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. A sickly child, he was sent to South Africa by his family when he was 17 years old in the hope that the climate might improve his health. He entered the diamond trade at Kimberley in 1871, when he was 18, and with funding from Rothschild & Co, began to systematically buy out and consolidate diamond mines. Over the next two decades he gained a near-complete monopoly of the world diamond market. His diamond company De Beers, formed in 1888, retains its prominence into the 21st century.

Rhodes entered the Cape Parliament at the age of 27 in 1881, and in 1890, he became prime minister. During his time as prime minister, Rhodes used his political power to expropriate land from black Africans through the Glen Grey Act, while also tripling the wealth requirement for voting under the Franchise and Ballot Act, effectively barring black people from taking part in elections. After overseeing the formation of Rhodesia during the early 1890s, he was forced to resign in 1896 after the disastrous Jameson Raid, an unauthorised attack on Paul Kruger's South African Republic (or Transvaal). Rhodes's career never recovered; his heart was weak, and after years of ill health he died in 1902. He was buried in what is now Zimbabwe; his grave has been a controversial site.

In his last will, he provided for the establishment of the international Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. Every year it grants 102 full postgraduate scholarships. It has benefited prime ministers of Malta, Australia, Canada, United States President Bill Clinton, and many others.

With the strengthening of international movements against racism, such as Rhodes Must Fall, Rhodes' legacy is a matter of debate to this day. Critics cite his confiscation of land from the black indigenous population of the Cape Colony, and false claims that southern African archeological sites such as Great Zimbabwe were built by European civilisations.

Origins
Rhodes was born in 1853 in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, the fifth son of the Reverend Francis William Rhodes (1807–1878) and his wife, Louisa Peacock. Francis was a Church of England clergyman who served as perpetual curate of Brentwood, Essex (1834–1843), and then as vicar of nearby Bishop's Stortford (1849–1876), where he was well known for never having preached a sermon longer than ten minutes.

Francis was the eldest son of William Rhodes (1774–1855), a brick manufacturer from Hackney, Middlesex. The family owned significant estates in London's Hackney and Dalston which Cecil would later inherit.

The earliest traceable direct ancestor of Cecil Rhodes is James Rhodes (fl. 1660) of Snape Green, Whitmore, Staffordshire. Cecil's siblings included Frank Rhodes, a British Army officer.

England and Jersey
Rhodes attended the Bishop's Stortford Grammar School from the age of nine, but, as a sickly, asthmatic adolescent, he was taken out of grammar school in 1869 and, according to Basil Williams, "continued his studies under his father's eye ..."

At age seven, he was recorded in the 1861 census as boarding with his aunt, Sophia Peacock, at a boarding house in Jersey, where the climate was perceived to provide a respite for those with conditions such as asthma. His health was weak and there were fears that he might be consumptive (have tuberculosis), a disease of which several of the family showed symptoms. His father decided to send him abroad for what were believed the good effects of a sea voyage and a better climate in South Africa.

South Africa
When he arrived in Africa, Rhodes lived on money lent by his aunt Sophia. After a brief stay with the Surveyor-General of Natal, P.C. Sutherland, in Pietermaritzburg, Rhodes took an interest in agriculture. He joined his brother Herbert on his cotton farm in the Umkomazi valley in Natal. The land was unsuitable for cotton, and the venture failed.

In October 1871, 18-year-old Rhodes and his 26-year-old brother Herbert left the colony for the diamond fields of Kimberley in Northern Cape Province. Financed by N M Rothschild & Sons, Rhodes succeeded over the next 17 years in buying up all the smaller diamond mining operations in the Kimberley area.

His monopoly of the world's diamond supply was sealed in 1890 through a strategic partnership with the London-based Diamond Syndicate. They agreed to control world supply to maintain high prices. Rhodes supervised the working of his brother's claim and speculated on his behalf. Among his associates in the early days were John X. Merriman and Charles Rudd. Rudd later became his partner in the De Beers Mining Company and the Niger Oil Company.

During the 1880s, Cape vineyards had been devastated by a phylloxera epidemic. The diseased vineyards were dug up and replanted, and farmers were looking for alternatives to wine. In 1892, Rhodes financed The Pioneer Fruit Growing Company at Nooitgedacht, a venture created by Harry Pickstone, an Englishman who had experience with fruit-growing in California. The shipping magnate Percy Molteno had just undertaken the first successful refrigerated export to Europe. In 1896, after consulting with Molteno, Rhodes began to pay more attention to export fruit farming and bought farms in Groot Drakenstein, Wellington and Stellenbosch. A year later, he bought Rhone and Boschendal and commissioned Sir Herbert Baker to build him a cottage there. The successful operation soon expanded into Rhodes Fruit Farms, and formed a cornerstone of the modern-day Cape fruit industry.

Education

In 1873, Rhodes left his farm field in the care of his business partner, Rudd, and sailed for England to study at university. He was admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term in 1874. He returned to South Africa and did not return for his second term at Oxford until 1876. He was greatly influenced by John Ruskin's inaugural lecture at Oxford, which reinforced his own attachment to the cause of British imperialism.

Among his Oxford associates were James Rochfort Maguire, later a fellow of All Souls College and a director of the British South Africa Company, and Charles Metcalfe. Due to his university career, Rhodes admired the Oxford tutorial system. Eventually, he was inspired to develop his scholarship scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye—except in science—an Oxford man is at the top of the tree".

While attending Oriel College, Rhodes became a Freemason in the Apollo University Lodge. Although initially he did not approve of the organisation, he continued to be a South African Freemason until his death in 1902. The shortcomings of the Freemasons, in his opinion, later caused him to envisage his own secret society with the goal of bringing the entire world under British rule.

Diamonds and the establishment of De Beers

During his years at Oxford, Rhodes continued to prosper in Kimberley. Before his departure for Oxford, he and C.D. Rudd had moved from the Kimberley Mine to invest in the more costly claims of what was known as old De Beers (Vooruitzicht). It was named after Johannes Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus, who occupied the farm.

After purchasing the land in 1839 from David Danser, a Koranna chief in the area, David Stephanus Fourie, forebear of Claudine Fourie-Grosvenor, had allowed the de Beers and various other Afrikaner families to cultivate the land. The region extended from the Modder River via the Vet River up to the Vaal River.

In 1874 and 1875, the diamond fields were in the grip of depression, but Rhodes and Rudd were among those who stayed to consolidate their interests. They believed that diamonds would be numerous in the hard blue ground that had been exposed after the softer, yellow layer near the surface had been worked out. During this time, the technical problem of clearing out the water that was flooding the mines became serious. Rhodes and Rudd obtained the contract for pumping water out of the three main mines. After Rhodes returned from his first term at Oxford, he lived with Robert Dundas Graham, who later became a mining partner with Rudd and Rhodes.

On 13 March 1888, Rhodes and Rudd launched De Beers Consolidated Mines after the amalgamation of a number of individual claims. With £200,000 of capital, the company, of which Rhodes was secretary, owned the largest interest in the mine (£200,000 in 1880 = £22.5m in 2020 = $28.5m USD). Rhodes was named the chairman of De Beers at the company's founding in 1888. De Beers was established with funding from N.M. Rothschild & Sons in 1887.

Politics in South Africa

In 1880, Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. With the earlier incorporation of Griqualand West into the Cape Colony under the Molteno Ministry in 1877, the area had obtained six seats in the Cape House of Assembly. Rhodes chose the rural and predominately Boer constituency of Barkly West, which would remain loyal to Rhodes until his death.

When Rhodes became a member of the Cape Parliament, the chief goal of the assembly was to help decide the future of Basutoland. The ministry of Sir Gordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after the 1880 rebellion known as the Gun War. The Sprigg ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its policy of disarming all native Africans to those of the Basotho nation, who resisted.

In 1890, Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. He introduced various Acts of Parliament to push black people from their lands and make way for industrial development. Rhodes's view was that black people needed to be driven off their land to "stimulate them to labour" and to change their habits. "It must be brought home to them", Rhodes said, "that in future nine-tenths of them will have to spend their lives in manual labour, and the sooner that is brought home to them the better."

In 1892, Rhodes's Franchise and Ballot Act raised the property requirements from a relatively low £25 to a significantly higher £75 which had a disproportionate effect on the previously growing number of enfranchised black people in the Cape under the Cape Qualified Franchise that had been in force since 1853. By limiting the amount of land which black Africans were legally allowed to hold in the Glen Grey Act of 1894, Rhodes further disenfranchised the black population. To quote Richard Dowden, most would now "find it almost impossible to get back on the list because of the legal limit on the amount of land they could hold". In addition, Rhodes was an early architect of the Natives Land Act, 1913, which would limit the areas of the country where black Africans were allowed to settle to less than 10%. At the time, Rhodes would argue that "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa."

Rhodes also introduced educational reform to the area. His policies were instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South Africa, such as the Hut tax.Rhodes did not, however, have direct political power over the independent Boer Republic of the Transvaal. He often disagreed with the Transvaal government's policies, which he considered unsupportive of mine-owners' interests. In 1895, believing he could use his influence to overthrow the Boer government, Rhodes supported the Jameson Raid, an unsuccessful attempt to create an uprising in the Transvaal that had the tacit approval of Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain. The raid was a catastrophic failure. It forced Cecil Rhodes to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, sent his oldest brother Col. Frank Rhodes to jail in Transvaal convicted of high treason and nearly sentenced to death, and contributed to the outbreak of the Second Boer War.

In 1899, Rhodes was sued by a man named Burrows for falsely representing the purpose of the raid and thereby convincing him to participate in the raid. Burrows was severely wounded and had to have his leg amputated. His suit for £3,000 in damages was successful.

Rhodes and the Imperial Factor
Rhodes used his wealth and that of his business partner Alfred Beit and other investors to pursue his dream of creating a British Empire in new territories to the north by obtaining mineral concessions from the most powerful indigenous chiefs. Rhodes' competitive advantage over other mineral prospecting companies was his combination of wealth and astute political instincts, also called the "imperial factor," as he often collaborated with the British Government. He befriended its local representatives, the British Commissioners, and through them organized British protectorates over the mineral concession areas via separate but related treaties. In this way he obtained both legality and security for mining operations. He could then attract more investors. Imperial expansion and capital investment went hand in hand.

The imperial factor was a double-edged sword: Rhodes did not want the bureaucrats of the Colonial Office in London to interfere in the Empire in Africa. He wanted British settlers and local politicians and governors to run it. This put him on a collision course with many in Britain, as well as with British missionaries, who favoured what they saw as the more ethical direct rule from London. Rhodes prevailed because he would pay the cost of administering the territories to the north of South Africa against his future mining profits. The Colonial Office did not have enough funding for this. Rhodes promoted his business interests as in the strategic interest of Britain: preventing the Portuguese, the Germans or the Boers from moving into south-central Africa. Rhodes's companies and agents cemented these advantages by obtaining many mining concessions, as exemplified by the Rudd and Lochner Concessions.

Treaties, concessions and charters
Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a mining concession from Lobengula, King of the Ndebele of Matabeleland. In 1888 he tried again. He sent John Smith Moffat, son of the missionary Robert Moffat, who was trusted by Lobengula, to persuade the latter to sign a treaty of friendship with Britain, and to look favourably on Rhodes's proposals. His associate Charles Rudd, together with Francis Thompson and Rochfort Maguire, assured Lobengula that no more than ten white men would mine in Matabeleland. This limitation was left out of the document, known as the Rudd Concession, which Lobengula signed. Furthermore, it stated that the mining companies could do anything necessary to their operations. When Lobengula discovered later the true effects of the concession, he tried to renounce it, but the British Government ignored him.

During the company's early days, Rhodes and his associates set themselves up to make millions (hundreds of millions in current pounds) over the coming years through what has been described as a "suppressio veri ... which must be regarded as one of Rhodes's least creditable actions". Contrary to what the British government and the public had been allowed to think, the Rudd Concession was not vested in the British South Africa Company, but in a short-lived ancillary concern of Rhodes, Rudd and a few others called the Central Search Association, which was quietly formed in London in 1889. This entity renamed itself the United Concessions Company in 1890, and soon after sold the Rudd Concession to the Chartered Company for 1,000,000 shares. When Colonial Office functionaries discovered this chicanery in 1891, they advised Secretary of State for the Colonies Viscount Knutsford to consider revoking the concession, but no action was taken.

Armed with the Rudd Concession, in 1889 Rhodes obtained a charter from the British Government for his British South Africa Company (BSAC) to rule, police, and make new treaties and concessions from the Limpopo River to the great lakes of Central Africa. He obtained further concessions and treaties north of the Zambezi, such as those in Barotseland (the Lochner Concession with King Lewanika in 1890, which was similar to the Rudd Concession); and in the Lake Mweru area (Alfred Sharpe's 1890 Kazembe concession). Rhodes also sent Sharpe to get a concession over mineral-rich Katanga, but met his match in ruthlessness: when Sharpe was rebuffed by its ruler Msiri, King Leopold II of Belgium obtained a concession over Msiri's dead body for his Congo Free State.

Rhodes also wanted Bechuanaland Protectorate incorporated in the BSAC charter. But three Tswana kings, including Khama III, travelled to Britain and won over British public opinion for it to remain governed by the British Colonial Office in London. Rhodes commented: "It is humiliating to be utterly beaten by these niggers."

The British Colonial Office also decided to administer British Central Africa owing to the activism of David Livingstone trying to end the East African Arab-Swahili slave trade. Rhodes paid much of the cost so that the British Central Africa Commissioner Sir Harry Johnston, and his successor Alfred Sharpe, would assist with security for Rhodes in the BSAC's north-eastern territories. Johnston shared Rhodes's expansionist views, but he and his successors were not as pro-settler as Rhodes, and disagreed on dealings with Africans.

Rhodesia
The BSAC had its own police force, the British South Africa Police, which was used to control Matabeleland and Mashonaland, in present-day Zimbabwe. The company had hoped to start a "new Rand" from the ancient gold mines of the Shona. Because gold deposits weren't as plentiful as they had hoped, many of the white settlers who accompanied the BSAC to Mashonaland became farmers rather than miners. White settlers and their locally-employed Native Police engaged in widespread indiscriminate rape of Ndebele women in the early 1890s.

The Ndebele and the Shona—the two main, but rival, peoples—took advantage of the absence of most of the BSAP for the Jameson Raid in January 1896; they separately rebelled against the coming of the European settlers, and the BSAC defeated them in the Second Matabele War. Rhodes went to Matabeleland after his resignation as Cape Colony Premier, and appointed himself Colonel in his own column of irregular troops moving from Salisbury to Bulawayo to relieve the siege of whites there. He remained Managing Director of the BSAC (with power of attorney to take decisions without reference back to the Board in London) until June 1896, defying Chamberlain's calls to resign, and he gave instructions that no mercy be shown in putting down the rebellion, telling officers that "Your instructions are" he told a major, to "do the most harm you can to the natives around you." He ordered a police officer to "kill all you can", even those Ndebele who begged for mercy and threw down their arms. Shortly after learning of the assassination of the Ndebele spiritual leader, Mlimo, by the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, and after participating in the cavalry charge at one of the last pitched battles of this phase of the war, Rhodes' associate Johan Colenbrander arranged for a meeting with the remaining Ndebele chiefs. Rhodes and a few colleagues walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo Hills. In a series of meetings between August and October, he persuaded the Impi to lay down their arms, thus ending the Second Matabele War.

In the aftermath of the war in Matabeleland, but whilst the uprising in Mashonaland was being suppressed, Rhodes returned to London to give evidence to the UK House of Commons Select Committee of Enquiry into the Jameson Raid. As Rhodes had incriminating telegrams demonstrating the complicity and foreknowledge of the Raid by Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, he and his solicitor were able to blackmail Chamberlain into retaining the BSAC Charter, leaving the Company in charge of administering the territory north of the Limpopo even as it became a Crown colony. Rhodes returned to Mashonaland, further overseeing the suppression of the uprising there into 1897. The scandal attached to his name did not prevent him rejoining the board of the BSAC in 1898. He remained an MP in the Cape Parliament and a Privy Councillor.

By the end of 1894, the territories over which the BSAC had concessions or treaties, collectively called "Zambesia" after the Zambezi River flowing through the middle, comprised an area of 1,143,000 km2 between the Limpopo River and Lake Tanganyika. In May 1895, its name was officially changed to "Rhodesia", reflecting Rhodes's popularity among settlers who had been using the name informally since 1891. The designation Southern Rhodesia was officially adopted in 1898 for the part south of the Zambezi, which later became Zimbabwe; and the designations North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia were used from 1895 for the territory which later became Northern Rhodesia, then Zambia. He built a house for himself in 1897 in Bulawayo.

Rhodes decreed in his will that he was to be buried in Matopos Hills (now Matobo Hills). After his death in the Cape in 1902, his body was transported by train to Bulawayo. His burial was attended by Ndebele chiefs, now paid agents of the BSAC administration, who asked that the firing party should not discharge their rifles as this would disturb the spirits. Then, for the first time, they gave a white man the Matabele royal salute, Bayete. Rhodes is buried alongside Leander Starr Jameson and 34 British soldiers killed in the Shangani Patrol. Despite occasional efforts to return his body to the United Kingdom, his grave remains there still, "part and parcel of the history of Zimbabwe" and attracts thousands of visitors each year.

"Cape to Cairo Red Line"

One of Rhodes's dreams was for a "red line" on the map from the Cape to Cairo (on geo-political maps, British dominions were always denoted in red or pink). Rhodes had been instrumental in securing southern African states for the Empire. He and others felt the best way to "unify the possessions, facilitate governance, enable the military to move quickly to hot spots or conduct war, help settlement, and foster trade" would be to build the "Cape to Cairo Railway".

This enterprise was not without its problems. France had a conflicting strategy in the late 1890s to link its colonies from west to east across the continent and the Portuguese produced the "Pink Map", representing their claims to sovereignty in Africa. Ultimately, Belgium and Germany proved to be the main obstacles to the British objective until the United Kingdom conquered and seized Tanganyika from the Germans as a League of Nations mandate in World War I.

Political views
Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. In what he described as "a draft of some of my ideas" written in 1877 while a student at Oxford, Rhodes said of the English, "I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our territory means the birth of more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence." Rhodes bemoaned that there was little land left to conquer and said "to think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far".

Furthermore Rhodes saw imperialism as a way to alleviate domestic social problems - "In order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists".

Rhodes wanted to develop a Commonwealth in which all of the British-dominated countries in the empire would be represented in the British Parliament. Rhodes explicitly stipulated in his will that all races should be eligible for the scholarships. It is said that he wanted to develop an American elite of philosopher-kings who would have the United States rejoin the British Empire. As Rhodes also respected and admired the Germans and their Kaiser, he allowed German students to be included in the Rhodes scholarships. He believed that eventually the United Kingdom (including Ireland), the US, and Germany together would dominate the world and ensure perpetual peace.

Rhodes's views on race have been debated; he supported the rights of indigenous Africans to vote, but critics have labelled him as an "architect of apartheid" and a "white supremacist", particularly since 2015. According to Magubane, Rhodes was "unhappy that in many Cape Constituencies, Africans could be decisive if more of them exercised this right to vote under current law [referring to the Cape Qualified Franchise]," with Rhodes arguing that "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa". Rhodes advocated the governance of indigenous Africans living in the Cape Colony "in a state of barbarism and communal tenure" as "a subject race. I do not go so far as the member for Victoria West, who would not give the black man a vote. ... If the whites maintain their position as the supreme race, the day may come when we shall be thankful that we have the natives with us in their proper position."

He once stated "I prefer land to niggers" and referred to the 'Anglo-Saxon race' as "the best, most human, most honourable race the world possesses". He thought that those lands which were occupied by the "most despicable specimens of human beings" should be inhabited by Anglo-Saxons.

However others have disputed these views. For example, historian Raymond C. Mensing notes that Rhodes has the reputation as the most flamboyant exemplar of the British imperial spirit, and always believed that British institutions were the best. Mensing argues that Rhodes quietly developed a more nuanced concept of imperial federation in Africa, and that his mature views were more balanced and realistic. According to Mensing, "Rhodes was not a biological or maximal racist. Despite his support for what became the basis for the apartheid system, he is best seen as a cultural or minimal racist". In a 2016 opinion piece for The Times, Oxford University professor Nigel Biggar argued that although Rhodes was a committed imperialist, the charges of racism against him are unfounded. In a 2021 article, Biggar further argued that:

"If Rhodes was a racist, he would not have enjoyed cordial relations with individual Africans, he would not have regarded them as capable of civilisation, and he would not have supported their right to vote at all. Nor would he have stipulated in his final will of July 1899 that the scholarships that would famously bear his name should be awarded without regard for “race”. And yet he did all these things."

On domestic politics within Britain, Rhodes was a supporter of the Liberal Party. Rhodes' only major impact was his large-scale support of the Irish nationalist party, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891).

Rhodes worked well with the Afrikaners in the Cape Colony; he supported teaching Dutch as well as English in public schools. While Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, he helped to remove most of their legal disabilities. He was a friend of Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Afrikaner Bond, and it was largely because of Afrikaner support that he became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Rhodes advocated greater self-government for the Cape Colony, in line with his preference for the empire to be controlled by local settlers and politicians rather than by London.

Scholar and Zimbabwean author Peter Godwin, whilst critical of Rhodes, writes that he needs to be viewed via the prisms and cultural and social perspective of his epoch, positing that Rhodes "was no 19th-century Hitler. He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his time...Rhodes and the white pioneers in southern Africa did behave despicably by today's standards, but no worse than the white settlers in North America, South America, and Australia; and in some senses better, considering that the genocide of natives in Africa was less complete. For all the former African colonies are now ruled by indigenous peoples, unlike the Americas and the Antipodes, most of whose aboriginal natives were all but exterminated."

Godwin goes on to say "Rhodes and his cronies fit in perfectly with their surroundings and conformed to the morality (or lack of it) of the day. As is so often the case, history simply followed the gravitational pull of superior firepower."

Personal life
Rhodes never married, pleading, "I have too much work on my hands" and saying that he would not be a dutiful husband. Author Robin Brown has claimed in The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes’s Plan for a New World Order that Rhodes was a homosexual who was in love with his private secretary, Neville Pickering, and that he established "… a homosexual hegemony—which was already operative in the Secret Society—[and] went on to influence, if not control, British politics at the beginning of the twentieth century". Paul Maylam of Rhodes University criticised the book in a review for The Conversation as "based heavily on surmise and assertion" and lacking "referenced source material to substantiate its claims", as well as being riddled with basic factual errors.

Princess Radziwiłł
In the last years of his life, Rhodes was stalked by Polish princess Catherine Radziwiłł, born Rzewuska, who had married into the noble Polish family Radziwiłł. The princess falsely claimed that she was engaged to Rhodes, and that they were having an affair. She asked him to marry her, but Rhodes refused. In reaction, she accused him of loan fraud. He had to go to trial and testify against her accusation. She wrote a biography of Rhodes called Cecil Rhodes: Man and Empire Maker. Her accusations were eventually proven to be false.

Second Boer War
During the Second Boer War Rhodes went to Kimberley at the onset of the siege, in a calculated move to raise the political stakes on the government to dedicate resources to the defence of the city. The military felt he was more of a liability than an asset and found him intolerable. The officer commanding the garrison of Kimberley, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kekewich, experienced serious personal difficulties with Rhodes because of the latter's inability to co-operate.

Despite these differences, Rhodes' company was instrumental in the defence of the city, providing water and refrigeration facilities, constructing fortifications, and manufacturing an armoured train, shells and a one-off gun named Long Cecil.

Rhodes used his position and influence to lobby the British government to relieve the siege of Kimberley, claiming in the press that the situation in the city was desperate. The military wanted to assemble a large force to take the Boer cities of Bloemfontein and Pretoria, but they were compelled to change their plans and send three separate smaller forces to relieve the sieges of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith.

Death
Although Rhodes remained a leading figure in the politics of southern Africa, especially during the Second Boer War, he was dogged by ill health throughout his relatively short life.

He was sent to Natal aged 16 because it was believed the climate might help problems with his heart. On returning to England in 1872, his health again deteriorated with heart and lung problems, to the extent that his doctor, Sir Morell Mackenzie, believed he would survive only six months. He returned to Kimberley where his health improved. From age 40 his heart condition returned with increasing severity until his death from heart failure in 1902, aged 48, at his seaside cottage in Muizenberg.

The government arranged an epic journey by train from the Cape to Rhodesia, with the funeral train stopping at every station to allow mourners to pay their respects. It was reported that at Kimberley, "practically the entire population marched in procession past the funeral car". He was finally laid to rest at World's View, a hilltop located approximately 35 km south of Bulawayo, in what was then Rhodesia. Today, his gravesite is part of Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe.

Legacy
Rhodes has been the target of much recent criticism, with some historians attacking him as a ruthless imperialist and white supremacist. The continued presence of his grave in the Matopos (now Matobo) hills has not been without controversy in contemporary Zimbabwe. In December 2010, Cain Mathema, the governor of Bulawayo, branded the grave outside the country's second city an "insult to the African ancestors" and said he believed its presence had brought bad luck and poor weather to the region.

In February 2012, Mugabe loyalists and ZANU-PF activists visited the grave site demanding permission from the local chief to exhume Rhodes's remains and return them to Britain. Many considered this a nationalist political stunt in the run up to an election, and Local Chief Masuku and Godfrey Mahachi, one of the country's foremost archaeologists, strongly expressed their opposition to the grave being removed due to its historical significance to Zimbabwe. Then-president Robert Mugabe also opposed the move. In 2004, Rhodes was voted 56th in the SABC 3 television series Great South Africans. A preparatory school in the Midlands town of Gweru in Zimbabwe is named after him. In the early 2000s during the height of the land reform and racial tensions, ZANU-PF politicians called for a change in all the country's school names with colonial ties, however, efforts were mostly fruitless as most people felt that it was unnecessary and names of places they live in reflect the diverse identity and cultural heritage of the country but called for the government to embrace the history of the country and allow room for new names for new places in the ever-growing towns and cities.

In his second will, written in 1877 before he had accumulated his wealth, Rhodes wanted to create a secret society that would bring the whole world under British rule. His biographer calls it an "extensive fantasy." Rhodes envisioned a secret society to extend British rule worldwide, including China, Japan, all of Africa and South America, and indeed the United States as well:

"To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity."

Rhodes's final will—when he actually did have money—was much more realistic and focused on scholarships. He also left a large area of land on the slopes of Table Mountain to the South African nation. Part of this estate became the upper campus of the University of Cape Town, another part became the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, while much was spared from development and is now an important conservation area.

South Africa's Rhodes University is named after him.

Rhodes Scholarship
In his last will, he provided for the establishment of the Rhodes Scholarship. Over the course of the previous half-century, governments, universities and individuals in the settler colonies had been establishing travelling scholarships for this purpose. The Rhodes awards fit the established pattern. The scholarship enabled male students from territories under British rule or formerly under British rule and from Germany to study at Rhodes's alma mater, the University of Oxford. Rhodes' aims were to promote leadership marked by public spirit and good character, and to "render war impossible" by promoting friendship between the great powers.

Memorials
Rhodes Memorial stands on Rhodes's favourite spot on the slopes of Devil's Peak, Cape Town, with a view looking north and east towards the Cape to Cairo route. From 1910 to 1984 Rhodes's house in Cape Town, Groote Schuur, was the official Cape residence of the prime ministers of South Africa and continued as a presidential residence.

His birthplace was established in 1938 as the Rhodes Memorial Museum, now known as Bishops Stortford Museum. The cottage in Muizenberg where he died is a provincial heritage site in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The cottage today is operated as a museum by the Muizenberg Historical Conservation Society, and is open to the public. A broad display of Rhodes material can be seen, including the original De Beers board room table around which diamonds worth billions of dollars were traded.

Rhodes University College, now Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, was established in his name by his trustees and founded by Act of Parliament on 31 May 1904.

The residents of Kimberley, Northern Cape elected to build a memorial in Rhodes's honour in their city, which was unveiled in 1907. The 72-ton bronze statue depicts Rhodes on his horse, looking north with map in hand, and dressed as he was when he met the Ndebele after their rebellion.

The founder of the original country of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Cecil John Rhodes first visited Nyanga in the Eastern Highlands of the country in 1897. Captivated by the unspoilt and breathtaking beauty of the area, he immediately purchased a parcel of farms totalling 40,000 ha and then proceeded to import cattle from Mozambique and develop extensive plantations of apple and fruit trees. When he died in 1902, Rhodes bequeathed most of the estate to the nation, and this now forms the Nyanga National Park. Rhodes's original farmhouse has been meticulously preserved and is now the Rhodes Nyanga Hotel.

Opposition

Memorials to Rhodes have been opposed since at least the 1950s, when some Afrikaner students demanded the removal of a Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town. A 2015 movement, known as "Rhodes Must Fall" (or #RhodesMustFall on social media), began with student protests at the University of Cape Town that were successful in getting university authorities to remove the Rhodes statue from the campus. The protest also had the broader goal of highlighting what the activists considered the lack of systemic post-apartheid racial transformation in South African institutions.

Following a series of protests and vandalism at the University of Cape Town, various movements both in South Africa and other countries have been launched in opposition to Cecil Rhodes memorials. These include a campaign to change the name of Rhodes University and to remove a statue of Rhodes from Oriel College, Oxford. The campaign was covered in a documentary by Channel 4, which was called The Battle for Britain's Heroes. The documentary was commissioned after Afua Hirsch wrote an article on the topic. Moreover, an article by Amit Chaudhuri, in The Guardian, suggested the criticism was "unsurprising and overdue". Other academics including Kehinde Andrews, prominent British academic and author specialising in Black studies, have vocally spoken in favour of #RhodesMustFall. However, Oriel College opted to keep the Rhodes statue, despite the protests. Oriel College claimed in 2016 they would lose about £100 million worth of gifts if they removed the statue. Nevertheless, in June 2020, the college voted in favour of setting up an independent commission of inquiry, amid widespread support for removing the statue. A statue of Rhodes was erected in the city of Bulawayo in 1904 in the city centre. In 1981 after the country's independence the statue was removed to the centenary park at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe.

Encyclopædia Britannica, discussing his legacy, wrote of Rhodes that he "once defined his policy as 'equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi' and later, under liberal pressure, amended 'white' to 'civilized'. But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming 'civilized' as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing."

As part of his legacy, on his death Rhodes left a significant amount of money to be used to finance talented young scholars ("race" was not a criterion) at Oxford. Currently, in Oxford a number of those South African and Zimbabwean recipients of funds from his legacy are campaigning for his statue to be removed from display in Oxford. When asked if there was any double standard or hypocrisy in being funded by the Rhodes Scholarship fund and benefiting from the opportunity, whilst at the same time campaigning against the legacy of Rhodes, one of the South African campaigners, Ntokozo Qwabe, replied that "this scholarship does not buy our silence...There is no hypocrisy in being a recipient of a Rhodes scholarship and being publicly critical of Cecil Rhodes and his legacy... There is no clause that binds us to find 'the good' in Rhodes’ character, nor to sanitise the imperialist, colonial agenda he propagated".

In June 2020, amid the wider context of Black Lives Matter protests, the governing body of Oxford's Oriel College voted to remove the statue of Rhodes located on the college's façade facing Oxford's High Street. The actual removal was not to take place until at least early spring 2021, when a commission set up by the college delivered its report on the future of the statue. In May 2021, the commission reported that, while the majority of members supported the statue's removal, the costs to do so were prohibitively high, and the college would therefore not be taking action.

Popular culture

 * Mark Twain's sarcastic summation of Rhodes ("I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake"), from Chapter LXIX of Following the Equator, still often appears in collections of famous insults.
 * He is depicted, along with other Cape notables, in the 1899 artwork Holiday Time in Cape Town by James Ford.
 * The will of Cecil Rhodes is the central theme in the science fiction book Great Work of Time by John Crowley, an alternative history in which the Secret Society stipulated in the will was indeed established. Its members eventually achieve the secret of time travel and use it to restrain World War I and prevent World War II, and to perpetuate the world ascendancy of the British Empire up to the end of the twentieth century. The book contains a vivid description of Cecil Rhodes himself, seen through the eyes of a traveller from the future British Empire.
 * In the British film Rhodes of Africa (1936, directed by Austrian filmmaker Berthold Viertel), Rhodes was portrayed by Canadian actor Walter Huston.
 * Rhodes is the unofficial mascot of Uncomfortable Oxford, an Oxford-based tour guide and history organisation which focuses on British imperial history. Much of their promotional material, tours and speeches all focus on Rhodes's statue outside of Oriel College, Oxford, and they were central to organising the 2020 Oxford Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd.
 * Rhodes was played by Ferdinand Marian in the Nazi film Ohm Krüger (1941), where he—like all other British characters in the film—was presented as an outright villain.
 * In 1901, Rhodes bought Dalham Hall, Suffolk. In 1902, Colonel Frank Rhodes erected the village hall in the village of Dalham, near Bury St Edmunds, to commemorate the life of his brother, who had died before taking possession of the estate.
 * Rhodes was a peripheral but influential character in the historical novel The Covenant by James Michener.
 * His memorial at Devil's Peak also served as a temple in The Adventures of Sinbad episode "The Return of the Ronin".
 * The 1976 Hugh Masekela album Colonial Man has a song titled "Cecil Rhodes".
 * Cecil Rhodes was the subject of a South African television mini-series, Barney Barnato, made in 1989 and first aired on SABC in early 1990.
 * In 1996, BBC-TV made an eight-part television drama about Rhodes called Rhodes: The Life and Legend of Cecil Rhodes. It was produced by David Drury and written by Antony Thomas. It tells the story of Rhodes' life through a series of flashbacks of conversations between him and Princess Catherine Radziwiłł and also between her and people who knew him. It also shows the story of how she stalked and eventually ruined him. In the serial, Cecil Rhodes is played by Martin Shaw, the younger Cecil Rhodes is played by his son Joe Shaw, and Princess Radziwiłł is played by Frances Barber. In the serial Rhodes is portrayed as ruthless and greedy. The serial also suggests that he was homosexual. Countering the implication of Rhodes' homosexuality, historian and journalist Paul Johnson wrote that Rhodes had been falsely smeared by the programme, commenting: "In nine tendentious hours, Rhodes is to be presented as a corrupt and greedy money-grabber, a racist and paedophile, whose disgusting passion was to get his hands on young boys ... the BBC has spent £10m of our money putting together a farrago of exaggerations and smears about this great man." Peter Godwin said of the film that "it feels like a work overwhelmingly informed by malice, consistently seizing on the very worst interpretation of the man without really attempting to get under his skin. Rhodes was no 19th-century Hitler. He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his time."
 * Rhodes features prominently in Wilbur Smith's Ballantyne series of novels, fictional stories based amongst real events in Rhodes' lifetime.
 * Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (b. 1911) believed himself to be the literal reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes.

Monographs

 * , a scholarly biography
 * Galbraith, John S. Crown and Charter: the Early Years of the British South Africa Company (1974).
 * Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War: A History (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * , a scholarly biography
 * Galbraith, John S. Crown and Charter: the Early Years of the British South Africa Company (1974).
 * Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War: A History (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * , a scholarly biography
 * Galbraith, John S. Crown and Charter: the Early Years of the British South Africa Company (1974).
 * Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War: A History (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * , a scholarly biography
 * Galbraith, John S. Crown and Charter: the Early Years of the British South Africa Company (1974).
 * Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War: A History (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War: A History (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)
 * ; 856pp; the standard scholarly biography says McFarlane, (2007)

Journal articles

 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.
 * Plumb, J. H. "Cecil Rhodes" History Today (June 1953) 3#6 pp 431–38.

Websites

 * PBS: Empires; Queen Victoria; The Changing Empire; Characters : Cecil Rhodes

Historiography and memory

 * online review
 * online review
 * online review
 * online review
 * online review
 * online review
 * online review

title: Cecil Rhodes


text:
Reading F.C.

Reading Football Club is a professional football club based in Reading, Berkshire, England. They compete in EFL League One, the third level of the English football league system. They play their home matches at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.

Reading are nicknamed The Royals, due to Reading's location in the Royal County of Berkshire, though they were previously known as The Biscuitmen, due to the town's association with biscuit maker Huntley & Palmers. Established in 1871, the club is one of the oldest teams in England, but did not join The Football League until 1920, and first played in the top tier of English football league system in the 2006–07 season. The club competed in the 2012–13 Premier League season, having gained promotion at the end of the 2011–12 season after winning the Championship, but were relegated after just one season back in the top flight.

Reading won the 1987–88 Full Members' Cup and were one of only two Second Division clubs to lift the trophy, beating Luton Town 4–1 in the final at Wembley. The club's best performance in the FA Cup was reaching the semi-finals which they achieved twice: in 1926–27 and 2014–15.

The club played at Elm Park for 102 years, from 1896 to 1998. In 1998, the club moved to the new Madejski Stadium, which was named after the club's former chairman Sir John Madejski. In 2021, the club announced that the ground would be known as the Select Car Leasing Stadium for the subsequent decade for sponsorship reasons.

The club holds the record for the number of successive league wins at the start of a season, with a total of 13 wins at the start of the 1985–86 Third Division campaign and also the record for the highest number of points gained in a professional league season: 106 points in the 2005–06 Football League Championship campaign. Reading then achieved their highest finish of eighth in the 2006–07 Premier League, their first season as a top flight club.

Formation and gradual rise (1871–1991)
Reading were formed on 25 December 1871, following a public meeting at the Bridge Street Rooms organised by Joseph Edward Sydenham, who would go on to be club secretary. The early matches were played at Reading Recreation Ground, and later the club held fixtures at Reading Cricket Ground, Coley Park and Caversham Cricket Ground. The switch to professionalism in 1895 resulted in the need for a bigger ground and, to this end, the club moved again, to the purpose-built Elm Park on 5 September 1896. In 1913, Reading had a successful tour of Italy, prompting the leading sports newspaper Corriere della Sera to write, "Without doubt, Reading FC are the finest foreign team seen in Italy".

Reading were elected to the Football League Third Division South of the Football League in 1920. Reading's best performance in the FA Cup came in 1926–27 when they lost to eventual winners Cardiff City at Wolverhampton in the semi-final, a placement the club would not match again until 2015, when they lost to holders Arsenal in the semi-final. Reading lost their place in Division Two in May 1931, and remained in Third Division South until the outbreak of World War II. The club won the Southern Section Cup, beating Bristol City in the two-legged final in 1938, and when taking part in the regional London War League and Cup competitions, gained another honour by beating Brentford in the London War Cup Final of 1941 by 3–2 at Stamford Bridge.

When League football resumed after the war, Reading quickly came to prominence once again. The club's record victory, 10–2 versus Crystal Palace, was recorded in September 1946, and Reading twice finished runners-up in the Third (South), in 1948–49 and 1951–52, but they were denied a return to Division Two as only the champions were promoted. The side's moment of cup glory came in 1988 when they won the Simod Cup, beating a number of top-flight sides en route to their Wembley win over Luton Town. Reading were promoted to the Second Division as champions in 1986 under the management of Ian Branfoot, but were relegated back to the Third Division in 1988.

Onwards and upwards (1991–2005)
The appointment of Mark McGhee as player-manager, shortly after the takeover by John Madejski, in 1991 saw Reading move forward. They were crowned champions of the new Division Two in 1994. Thirty-five-year-old striker Jimmy Quinn was put in charge of the first team alongside midfielder Mick Gooding and guided Reading to runners-up in the final Division One table – only to be denied automatic promotion because of the streamlining of the Premier League, from 22 teams to 20. In 1995, Reading had eased past Tranmere Rovers in the play-off semi-finals and looked to have booked their place in the Premier League only to lose 4–3 against Bolton Wanderers in the final having been 2–0 up and missed a penalty at half-time. Quinn and Gooding's contracts were not renewed two years later after Reading had slid into the bottom half of Division One. Their successor, Terry Bullivant, lasted less than a season before being sacked in March 1998. Reading were relegated back to Division Two at the end of the 1997–98 season.

The year 1998 also saw Reading move into the new 24,200 all-seater Madejski Stadium, named after chairman John Madejski. Tommy Burns had taken over from Terry Bullivant but lasted just 18 months before being replaced by Alan Pardew, who had previously been reserve team manager before being released. The club finished third in 2000–01 qualifying for the play-offs, losing 2–3 in the final against Walsall at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Reading returned to Division One for 2002–03 after finishing runners-up in Division Two. The following season, they finished fourth in Division One and qualified for the play-offs, where they lost in the semi-final to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Pardew moved to West Ham United the following October and was replaced by Steve Coppell.

Rise to the Premier League and yo-yo years (2005–2013)
Reading won the 2005–06 Championship with a league record 106 points, scoring 99 goals and losing only twice. They were promoted to English football's top division for the first time in their history. The 2006–07 season saw Reading make their first appearance in the top flight of English football. Reading defied pre-season predictions of relegation to finish the season in eighth place with 55 points. Reading turned down the chance to play in the UEFA Intertoto Cup. In the run up to their second season in the Premier League, Reading took part in the 2007 Peace Cup in South Korea. This second season was less successful, however, and Reading were relegated back to the Championship.

Reading started the 2008–09 season with a 15 match unbeaten home run. They finished fourth and qualify for the play-offs, where they lost to Burnley in the semi-final. Manager Steve Coppell resigned just hours after the game, replaced by Brendan Rodgers. Rodgers left the club by mutual consent on 16 December 2009 and Brian McDermott made caretaker manager the same day. In the 2010–11 FA Cup, Reading reached the quarter-final, where they lost 1–0 to Manchester City at Etihad Stadium, Reading eventually finished fifth in the Championship to qualify for the division's play-offs. After beating Cardiff City in the semi-finals, they lost 4–2 to Swansea City in the final at Wembley. In the 2011–12 season, a streak of good form in the second half of the season, ensured promotion back to the Premier League on 17 April 2012 with 1–0 home win against Nottingham Forest.

On 21 January 2012 it was reported that Madejski planned to relinquish control of the club by selling a 51% stake for £40 million to Thames Sports Investments, a Russian consortium headed by Anton Zingarevich. As part of the deal, Madejski would continue as chairman before becoming honorary life president. Madejski's ownership of the club ended on 29 May 2012.

McDermott led Reading to their first Premier League win of the 2012–13 season on 17 November 2012 at their 11th attempt, defeating Everton 2–1 at home. On 11 March 2013, however, he left his position at Reading. Nigel Adkins was then appointed as manager, though he was unable to save them from relegation after drawing Queens Park Rangers 0–0 on 28 April 2013 at Loftus Road.

Return to the Championship (2013–2023)
The following season back in the Championship saw Reading make two high-profile signings in Wayne Bridge and Royston Drenthe in hope of an immediate return to the Premier League. Reading, however, missed out on the playoffs because of a last minute winner from Brighton & Hove Albion's Leonardo Ulloa, which meant the Seagulls made the playoffs at Reading's expense.

The 2014–15 pre-season saw further arrivals of Jamie Mackie on loan, Oliver Norwood and the return of Simon Cox. The club was under a high threat of administration, causing departures of Sean Morrison and Adam Le Fondre and a Thai consortium taking over the club. A good start to Nigel Adkins' second season in charge was followed by a poor run of results that ended with his sacking after a 6–1 away defeat to Birmingham City with Steve Clarke taking over the next day in the hope of a promotion push. However, a lack of goals and some poor form in the league meant the club faced some fears of relegation to League One, but safety was secured with few games to spare. Nonetheless, during that time, the club embarked on a successful FA Cup journey, reaching the semi-final where they lost 2–1 to Arsenal at Wembley. The following season saw the club bring in many players in the hopes of gaining promotion, but the club finished 17th.

In the summer leading up to the 2016–17 season the club announced the departure of Brian McDermott and eventually he was to be replaced by former Manchester United defender Jaap Stam. Under Stam, Reading achieved their highest finish since relegation back to the Championship by finishing third and reaching the play-offs, where they beat Fulham on aggregate before facing Huddersfield Town in the final at Wembley where they lost on penalties following 0–0 draw after extra time. In 2017, Chinese investors Dai Yongge and Dai Xiu Li acquired the club.

The team languished towards the bottom of the table for most of the 2017–18 season. On 21 March 2018, Stam resigned as manager after a nine-game winless run. Two days later, on 23 March 2018, Paul Clement was appointed as Reading's new manager; the club finished the season in 20th place, avoiding relegation by three points.

Clement was sacked on 6 December 2018 after poor results left the club outside of the relegation zone only on goal difference. He was replaced by José Gomes on 22 December, who steered the club away from relegation to finish 20th again. However, after a slow start to the 2019–20 season, Gomes was dismissed after less than a year in charge with the team in the relegation zone in October 2019. Sporting director Mark Bowen was promoted to the role as his replacement a week later and led the team to finish 14th before departing the club in August 2020.

Former Chicago Fire boss Veljko Paunović was appointed manager on 29 August 2020. The team got off to an excellent start to the 2020–21 season, winning seven of their first eight league games. However, the team's form faded after injuries to several key players and they eventually narrowly missed out of the play-offs, finishing seventh.

On 17 November 2021 it was confirmed Reading would be deducted six points due to breaching the EFL's profitability and sustainability rules. Over five years, the club reported pre-tax losses of £146m, way beyond the EFL's limit of a £13m annual pre-tax loss. In 2021, the club spent 234% of its revenue on player wages.

Following a 3–2 away victory over Preston North End in February 2022, manager Veljko Paunović left by mutual consent, with Paul Ince being placed in interim charge of the team alongside academy manager Michael Gilkes. On 16 May, Ince became the team's permanent manager, with Mark Bowen returning as head of football operations.

On 1 March 2023, the team was reported to be facing another six-point deduction for breaching profitability and sustainability rules. The club accepted the penalty on 4 April 2023, enforced with immediate effect. A week later, on 11 April, Ince left after a run of eight games without a win, leaving the club in 22nd place, one point from safety. Under-21 manager Noel Hunt was placed in interim charge until the end of the season. The club was relegated from the Championship on 4 May 2023 after 10 years in the second tier. Without the six point deduction, Reading would have finished on 50 points, escaping relegation.

League One struggles and club for sale (2023–)
In June 2023, Reading were charged by the EFL with failing to pay their players on time and in full, in October and November 2022, and April 2023, and with non-payment of taxes - charges that meant Reading might start their 2023–24 League One season with a points deduction. Following the EFL's action, Reading fans groups united to launch a campaign, Sell Before We Dai, urging owner Dai Yongge to sell the club, calling his stewardship "an unmitigated disaster" and citing the club's "excruciating financial losses". On 27 June, Reading were served a winding-up petition by HMRC over the unpaid tax bills, with a hearing set for 9 August (on 12 July, football finance expert Kieran Maguire described the club's ownership as "a car crash"). On 28 July, the club was placed under another transfer embargo because of the unpaid taxes. On 2 August, Dai Yongge was reported to be seeking new investors to bring financial stability to the club.

Meanwhile, on 26 June 2023, Reading announced the provisional appointment of Rubén Sellés as their new manager, confirmed on 14 July, after his visa application was successful.

On 16 August 2023, after one win and two defeats in their opening three league fixtures, Reading had a point deducted (their third deduction in three consecutive seasons), and a further three-point deduction suspended, for its failures to pay players fully and on time during the 2022–23 season. Dai Yongge was ordered to pay 125% of the club's forecast monthly wages into a designated account. Failure to comply, or not paying wages on time up to 30 June 2024, would activate the suspended penalty; the three-point deduction was applied on 13 September, and Dai Yongge faced a misconduct charge.

On 29 September 2023, Dai Yongge said he was open to "credible offers of interest" to buy the club after another transfer embargo was imposed in respect to an outstanding tax bill. A 3–2 home defeat by Portsmouth on 28 October dropped the club to the bottom of League One on six points, eight from safety; the match was preceded by a fans protest against Dai Yongge's ownership. On 31 October, the club was served another HMRC winding-up petition over unpaid taxes. On 1 November, Reading were referred to an EFL independent disciplinary commission regarding unpaid HMRC debts owed in September and October 2023. On 9 November, a sale of the club was reported to be progressing, and the latest winding-up petition and transfer embargo had been resolved. On 19 December 2023, Dai Yongge was fined £20,000 for Reading's wages failures; the EFL had recommended a 12-month ban from all football activities, but an independent disciplinary commission opted not to enforce it. A further £50,000 fine was suspended until 12 January 2024, and was triggered after Dai Yongge again failed to make the required full wage deposits.

On 13 January 2024, Reading's match against Port Vale was abandoned after home fans invaded the pitch to protest about Yongge's ownership of the club. After imposing a £50,000 fine for failing to meet wages deadlines, the EFL said Dai Yongge must "fund the club adequately" or "make immediate arrangements to sell". Reading CEO Dayong Pang said that, after two unsuccessful offers, Dai Yongge was "100% willing to sell the club" and the selling process was "ongoing"; On 26 January 2024, former CEO Nigel Howe (asked by Dai Yongge to oversee the club's sale) said eight parties were interested in buying Reading but any sale would take at least two months to complete.

On 27 February 2024, Reading received their second points deduction of the season, being docked two more points by the EFL after failing to make HMRC payments within an 80-day limit. The deduction left the club three points above the relegation places. In total, under Dai Yongge's ownership, the club has had 18 points deducted. In March 2024, Dai Yongge was "open to the sale" of the club's Bearwood Park training facility to secure funding while new owners were sought, a move criticised by supporters groups for the confusing message it sent to potential investors; the club faces a cash shortfall of about £1m for March. On 14 March, Reading announced they were holding talks with Wycombe Wanderers over the sale of Bearwood Park, but Wycombe put the talks "on hold" after learning that "planning limitations allowed only Reading to use the grounds".

On 21 March 2024, Nigel Howe said there have been "approaches from around the world" to buy Reading. Four days later, Reading were reported to be in "exclusive negotiations" with a buyer to agree final terms for Dai Yongge's shareholding, the stadium and the training ground; closing the deal could take up to two months. At the end of April 2024, the club finished the League One season in 17th position. Just over a month later, on 5 June 2024, Reading began talks with new bidders after failing to agree a sale with their preferred buyer. The club's continued support for womens and girls football was also jeopardised by its ongoing financial difficulties. One potential buyer was reported to be the Chiron Sports Group, a consortium led by Rob Couhig, former owner of Wycombe Wanderers.

Crest and colours

The first crest to appear on a Reading kit was in 1953, it featured just the letter "R". There was no crest seen again until 1981 when there was a crest featuring three elm trees and the rivers Thames and Kennet; this only lasted two seasons. From 1987 to 1996 the crest used the new kit colours of yellow, sky blue, royal blue and white. A brief return to a design based on the 1981 crest was reintroduced for the 1996–97 and 1997–98 seasons. Commenting on the need for a new crest to coincide with the move to the Madejski Stadium, as well as moving into the new millennium, Sir John Madejski said: "I know some traditionalists will say we should keep the old badge but they should bear in mind the need to move forward." The current crest was first seen on the kits for the 1998–99 season. It is based on the club colours—blue and white—and includes a crown to represent the Royal County of Berkshire and the Maiwand Lion to represent Reading.

The club's home kit for the 2022–23 season saw University of Reading's Ed Hawkins' stripe design included on the sleeves with the stripes representing the average temperature for a single year since Reading's foundation to raise awareness for climate change, the shirt itself being made of recycled plastic bottles.

Stadium
The club played at Reading Recreation Ground until 1878, before moving on to Reading Cricket Ground (1878–1882), Coley Park (1882–1889) and Caversham Cricket Ground (1889–1896).

In 1889, Reading were unable to continue playing at Coley Park as W B Monck (the local squire) no longer allowed football due to "rowdyism [by] the rougher elements". With club membership exceeding 300 by the time the club went professional in 1895, Reading required a proper ground. A meeting the following year determined that funding would be difficult. £20 was donated by J C Fidler, on the proviso that "no liquors were to be sold" on site. The rest of the cost was financed through donations by wealthy supporters, as well as one large individual donation. A former gravel pit in West Reading was identified as the site. The first game at Elm Park was held on 5 September 1896 between Reading and A Roston Bourke's XI. The visitors were a scratch team from Holloway College. £44 was taken on the gate, with an attendance of approximately 2,500.

In 1908, the club's annual general meeting proposed moving to a new ground near Reading railway station. A board meeting the following year decided that the move would not be possible, as "there was no chance of a move to the ground near to the GWR railway stations due to the actions of the Great Western Railway".

In 1994, the Taylor Report made an all-seater stadium compulsory in the top two divisions (the Premier League and the first division). Reading were champions of the second division in 1994, and were promoted to the first division. Reading became subject to the Taylor requirements, though converting Elm Park to an all-seater stadium would have been impractical. Instead, a location in Smallmead (to the south of the town) was identified as the site for a new stadium. The former council landfill site was bought for £1, with further conditions that the development of the stadium would include part-funding of the A33 relief road. Expansion of the club's home would also allow alternative commercial ventures (particularly leisure facilities) and shared use with other teams (such as rugby union clubs Richmond and London Irish). The last competitive match at Elm Park took place on 3 May 1998 against Norwich City, with Reading losing 1–0. Reading began the 1998–99 season at the Madejski Stadium. It was opened on 22 August 1998 when Luton Town were beaten 3–0. The stadium cost more than £50 million to build. For the first time in its history, Reading Football Club participated in the Premier League in the 2006–07 season. As a result of the sell-out crowds for their first few fixtures of the season, the club announced their intention, in October 2006, to make a planning application to extend the ground to between 37,000 and 38,000 seats. The application was made on 24 January 2007, proposing initially the extension of the East Stand with a further 6,000 seats (raising capacity to around 30,000) and subsequently extension of the North and South Stands to reach the full proposed capacity. On 24 May 2007, it was announced that planning permission had been granted to extend the stadium to a capacity of 36,900.

On 5 July 2016, at the end of Eamonn Dolan's funeral, Reading announced that the North Stand would be renamed the Eamonn Dolan Stand.

During the 2019–20 season Reading moved to a new training ground at Bearwood Golf Club to replace Hogwood Park, their previous training facility. In March 2024, owner Dai Yongge agreed to sell the Bearwood Park training ground to Wycombe Wanderers, claiming it was necessary to fund the club's short-term future while trying to sell the club.

In July 2021, at the beginning of the club's 150th anniversary season, it was announced that the Madejski Stadium had been rebranded as the Select Car Leasing Stadium for the next ten years. In honour of Sir John Madejski, the East Stand was renamed as The Sir John Madejski Stand.

Since 2023, Graham Griffin has been acting as the Stadium Manager.

Support
In 1930, the Reading Football Supporters’ Club (RFSC) was formed to represent the interests of supporters of the club and to assist in raising funds for the football club. On 18 March 2002, the Supporters' Trust at Reading become the official successor to the RFSC.

In 2001, Reading became the first football club to register their fans as an official member of their squad, giving the "player" registered with squad number 13 as 'Reading Fans'.

For the 2015–16 season, Reading had 12,983 season ticket holders – ranked 10th in the Championship and almost identical to former league champions Leeds United. The figure for that season was greater than the 12,552 recorded in the previous season, but down from the 2013–14 Championship peak of 14,547. The average attendance for the 2015–16 season was 17,570 – the 10th highest in the Championship.

Rivalries
Before going out of business in 1992, Aldershot were Reading's biggest rivals. Aldershot were, geographically, the closest Football League club to Reading. There was a strong rift between the two sets of fans, with fighting between fans occurring on several occasions. Strong feelings remain between fans of Reading and fans of Aldershot Town, the refounded club in Aldershot. Aldershot Town were promoted into the Football League in 2008, but the clubs haven't met in a competitive match since the demise of the original club. Aldershot were relegated out of the league in 2013, having entered administration, reducing the chances of a competitive meeting between the two sides in the near future.

Since Aldershot's exile, Reading's main local rivalries have been with Oxford United and Swindon Town. When the three teams had shared a division, their rivalry was referred to as the "Didcot Triangle". However, the rivalry between Oxford and Swindon is stronger than between either of the two and Reading, largely due to them both spending their recent history in lower divisions than Reading, and spending their previous history in higher divisions than Reading. In 2012, a small survey showed that Reading's main rivals were Aldershot Town, followed by Swindon Town and Oxford United.

Additional kit sponsors
During the 2013–14 season and 2014–15 season the Marussia F1 logo was on the back of the shirts as part of a sponsorship deal between former Russian owner Anton Zingarevich and Russian owned Marussia F1. This deal continued until the team entered administration in October 2014. The sponsorship deal ended despite the team surviving and racing in the 2015 Formula One season. During the 2015–16 season, Waitrose was on the back of the home shirt whilst Euro Cake was on the back of the away shirt, meanwhile Legend Alliance sponsored the shorts for the season. Waitrose and Euro Cake sponsored the home and away kits respectively again for the 2016–17 season. Cherwell Software took sponsorship of the back of the home shirt for the 2017–18 season while Euro Cake sponsored the back of the away shirt again for the third consecutive season. Reading confirmed Singaporean international financial technology firm and digital wallet specialist Rapidz as its ‘Back of Shirt’ sponsor for 2020–23.

Ownership and finances
As of December 2023, The Reading Football Club Limited, incorporated on 11 August 1897, was:
 * 98% Owned by Renhe Sports Management Ltd
 * 2% Owned by Reading Asia Holdings Ltd.

Records

 * Highest league finish: 8th in Premier League, 2006–07
 * Best FA Cup performance: Semi-finals, 1926–27, 2014–15
 * Best League Cup performance: Quarter-finals, 1995–96, 1997–98
 * Biggest win: 9–0 v. Exeter City (19 September 2023, EFL Trophy 1st round).
 * Heaviest defeat: 18–0 v. Preston North End (27 January 1894, FA Cup 1st round)
 * Longest winning sequence at the start of a season: 13 victories in 1985–86.

 * Most points in a single season in any English professional league: 106 points (2005–06)
 * Longest winless sequence at the start of a season (club record): 6 (2 draws and 4 defeats), (2018–19)
 * Fastest goal in a competitive game (club record), 55th fastest in association football: 9.55 seconds (Yakou Méïté; 2020–21)
 * Fastest goal in FA Cup history: 9 seconds (Jimmy Kébé; 2009–10)

Notable players
In 1999, Reading commissioned a poll of the supporters' 'Player of the Millennium' to determine the club's best ever player.

Appearances

 * Most appearances: Martin Hicks (603; 1978–1991)
 * Most league appearances: Martin Hicks (500; 1978–1991)

The following players have played more than 398 times for Reading, in all competitions.

Goalscorers

 * Most goals: Trevor Senior (191; 1983–1987, 1988–1992)
 * Most goals in a season: Trevor Senior (41; 1983–84)
 * Most league goals: Ronnie Blackman (158; 1947–1954)
 * Most league goals in a season: Ronnie Blackman (39; 1951–52)
 * Most league goals in a game: Arthur Bacon (6 vs. Stoke City; 1930–31)
 * Most penalties: Ray Reeves (21)

The following players have scored more than 85 times for Reading, in all competitions.

Goalkeeping

 * Longest time without conceding a goal: Steve Death (1,103 minutes; 1978–79; former English league record)

Other records
Reading hold the record for the number of successive league wins at the start of a season, with a total of 13 wins at the start of the 1985–86 Third Division campaign and also the record for the number of points gained in a professional league season with 106 points in the 2005–06 Football League Championship campaign. Reading finished champions of their division on both of these occasions.

The club's largest win was a 10–2 victory over Crystal Palace on 4 September 1946 in the Football League Third Division South. Reading's heaviest loss was an 18–0 defeat against Preston North End in the FA Cup 1st round on 27 January 1894. Reading have lost the two highest-scoring matches in the history of the Premier League; Portsmouth 7–4 Reading on 29 September 2007, and Tottenham Hotspur 6–4 Reading on 29 December 2007, as well as losing the highest-scoring League Cup game, Reading 5–7 Arsenal on 30 October 2012.

The player with the most league appearances is Martin Hicks, with 500 from 1978 to 1991. The most capped player to play for Reading is Chris Gunter, who has currently won 62 caps for Wales since being a Reading player since July 2012. The most league goals in total and in a season are held by Ronnie Blackman with 158 from 1947 to 1954 and 39 in 1951–52 respectively. The player with the most league goals in a game is Arthur Bacon with six against Stoke City in 1930–31. The first Reading-based player to play in the FIFA World Cup was Bobby Convey in 2006 with the United States. The record time for a goalkeeper not conceding a goal is held by Steve Death at 1,103 minutes in 1978–79, which is a former English league record in itself.

Reading's highest attendance at Elm Park was in 1927, when 33,042 spectators watched Reading defeat Brentford 1–0. The highest attendance at the Madejski Stadium is 24,184 for the Premier League game with Everton on 17 November 2012.

The highest transfer fee received for a Reading player is the £6.6 million 1899 Hoffenheim paid for Gylfi Sigurðsson on 31 August 2010.

Gylfi Sigurðsson and Samúel Friðjónsson became the first players from the Reading academy to feature in a World Cup squad by being named by Iceland for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Gylfi Sigurðsson went on to become the first academy graduate to score at the World Cup in Iceland's 2–1 defeat to Croatia on 26 June 2018, after becoming the first academy graduate to play in the World Cup with his appearance against Argentina on 16 June 2018.

Honours
League
 * Second Division / Championship (level 2)
 * Champions: 2005–06, 2011–12
 * Third Division South / Third Division / Second Division (level 3)
 * Champions: 1925–26, 1985–86, 1993–94
 * Runners-up: 2001–02
 * Fourth Division (level 4)
 * Champions: 1978–79
 * Promoted: 1975–76, 1983–84

Cup
 * Full Members' Cup
 * Winners: 1987–88
 * London War Cup
 * Winners: 1941
 * Third Division South Cup
 * Winners: 1938

Women's team
In May 2006, Reading launched the Reading FC Women's team. They used to play in the FA Premier League Southern Division. From 2014, Reading FC Women played in the FA Women's Super League 2 until they won promotion to the FA Women's Super League 1 in 2015 after winning the league. In the 2017–18 season, they finished fourth in the Women's Super League – their highest league position to date. The team currently plays at the Select Car Leasing Stadium. It was announced Reading FC Women would switch to operating on a part-time basis ahead of the 2023–24 season. On 30 June 2024, Reading FC Women withdrew from the Women's Championship due to financial difficulties, dropping to Tier 5 of the women's football pyramid.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Reading F.C.


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Orchard

An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees that are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive purpose. A fruit garden is generally synonymous with an orchard, although it is set on a smaller, non-commercial scale and may emphasize berry shrubs in preference to fruit trees. Most temperate-zone orchards are laid out in a regular grid, with a grazed or mown grass or bare soil base that makes maintenance and fruit gathering easy.

Most modern commercial orchards are planted for a single variety of fruit. While the importance of introducing biodiversity is recognized in forest plantations, introducing genetic diversity in orchard plantations by interspersing other trees might offer benefits. Genetic diversity in an orchard would provide resilience to pests and diseases, just as in forests.

Orchards are sometimes concentrated near bodies of water where climatic extremes are moderated and blossom time is retarded until frost danger is past.

Layout
An orchard's layout is the technique of planting the crops in a proper system. There are different methods of planting and thus different layouts. Some of these layout types are:

 * Square method
 * Rectangular method
 * Quincunx method
 * Triangular method
 * Hexagonal method
 * Contour or terrace method

For different varieties, these systems may vary to some extent.

Orchards by region

The most extensive orchards in the United States are apple and orange orchards, although citrus orchards are more commonly called groves. The most extensive apple orchard area is in eastern Washington state, with a lesser but significant apple orchard area in most of Upstate New York. Extensive orange orchards are found in Florida and southern California, where they are more widely known as "groves". In eastern North America, many orchards are along the shores of Lake Michigan (such as the Fruit Ridge Region), Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario.

In Canada, apple and other fruit orchards are widespread on the Niagara Peninsula, south of Lake Ontario. This region is known as Canada Fruitbelt and, in addition to large-scale commercial fruit marketing, it encourages "pick-your-own" activities in the harvest season.

In Spain, Murcia is a major orchard area (or la huerta) in Europe, with citrus crops. New Zealand, China, Argentina, and Chile also have extensive apple orchards.

Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire has been called The Town in the Orchard, since the 19th century, because it was surrounded by extensive orchards. Today, this heritage is celebrated through an annual Applefest.

Central Europe
Streuobstwiese (pl. Streuobstwiesen) is a German word that means a meadow with scattered fruit trees or fruit trees that are planted in a field. Streuobstwiese, or a meadow orchard, is a traditional landscape in the temperate, maritime climate of continental Western Europe. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Streuobstwiesen were a kind of a rural community orchard that were intended for the productive cultivation of stone fruit. In recent years, ecologists have successfully lobbied for state subsidies to valuable habitats, biodiversity and natural landscapes, which are also used to preserve old meadow orchards. Both conventional and meadow orchards provide a suitable habitat for many animal species that live in a cultured landscape. A notable example is the hoopoe that nests in tree hollows of old fruit trees and, in the absence of alternative nesting sites, is threatened in many parts of Europe because of the destruction of old orchards.

Historical orchards

 * Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, was the residence of American celebrated writer Louisa May Alcott.
 * Fruita, Utah, part of Capitol Reef National Park has Mormon pioneer orchards maintained by the United States National Park Service.

Modern orchards
Historical orchards have large, mature trees spaced for heavy equipment. Modern commercial apple orchards, by contrast and as one example, are often "high-density" (tree density above 150 PD/acre), and in extreme cases have up to 9000 PD/acre. These plants are no longer trees in the traditional sense, but instead resemble vines on dwarf stock and require trellises to support them.

Now new "Smart Orchards" are being set up throughout the world. The first examples of such orchards are the Smart Orchard at Washington, United States of America by Innov8 and Washington State University and Samriti Bagh orchard created in Maraog, India by Tejasvi Dogra that incorporates the use of various sensors for orchard management.

Orchard conservation in the UK

 * Natural England, through its Countryside Stewardship Scheme, Environmental Stewardship and Environmentally Sensitive Areas Scheme, gives grant aid and advice for the maintenance, enhancement or re-creation of historical orchards.
 * The Orchard Link organisation provides advice on how to manage and restore the county of Devon's orchards, as well as enabling the local community to use the local orchard produce. An organisation called Orchards Live carries out similar work in North Devon.
 * People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) has mapped every traditional orchard within England and Wales and manages the national inventory for this habitat.
 * The UK Biodiversity Partnership lists traditional orchards and a priority UK Biodiversity Action Plan habitat.
 * The Wiltshire Traditional Orchards Project maps, conserves and restores traditional orchards within Wiltshire, England.
 * An interim report from the National Trust showed that orchards had reduced in scale from approximately 95,000 hectares in the period 1892–1914, to 41,000 hectares overall in 2022. The campaign #BlossomWatch is part of a wider programme of work by the Trust to plant 68 new orchards by 2025, and four million trees with blossom by 2030.

Notable people

 * Belle van Dorn Harbert (born 1860), fruit farmer, founder of International Congress of Farm Women

title: Orchard