Rhodes Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

The real face of Derring Do

Near the beginning we see Rhodes at an inspiring lecture at Oxford given by Ruskin, where Rhodes seems to receive his mission for spreading the greatness of Englishmen around the world. I never realized how much evil Ruskin had done until now.

Martin Shaw was excellent as the ailing, charismatic and Empire building Rhodes, portraying his supressed homoerotic affection for younger blond men to perfection, with the same manliness that saw his schemes and plans mark South African and 'Rhodesian' history. He was so convincing it left me hoping to see his fall one moment and his rise the next.

Indeed, it is a very good portrayal of an important period in southern African history, and it's a great story. Well, by 'great', I mean the story is exciting, and interesting, whereas I find the ethos behind colonialism to be disgusting and responsible for many of today's ills… The series reveals the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the British (and other Europeans) which aren't often aired here in the UK, but will remain an eternal shame. In the series there were some British who weren't too bad. About two actually.

As well as the rise of the de Beers Diamond company and Kimberley, and the gold mining in Johannesburg, and forays into the future 'Rhodesia, this series also touches on the beginning of the Boer War during which thousands of Boers died in 'Concentration Camps', a new-fangled invention of the British conceived to keep thousands of people corralled in a small space. As we know later in the 20th Century, the idea was ressussitated by the Nazis.

The most tragic for me was the portrayal throughout of the gradual disintegration of African tribal society, and of their decline into subjection under rapacious Western Capitalism.