The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes

by William Kelleher Storey

The Colonialist is the first biography in decades of Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist and diamond magnate whose dream was to build a railway from Cape Town in South Africa all the way to Cairo in Egypt via British territory. With previous biographies boasting titles like Flawed Colossus, it is indeed high time for a reassessment of a man who, these days, is best known for having excrement thrown over his statue at the University of Cape Town in the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ protest. The Financial Times described The Colonialist as a “fine new biography.“