ABSTRACT
In southern Africa the one man who could undoubtedly think big was Cecil John Rhodes. Rhodes had arrived in South Africa in 1870, a thin, tubercular young man, sent to regain his health on his brother's cotton farm in Natal. Rhodes did hope to find gold in Mashonaland. The experience of the British East Africa Company had shown that only reasonable profits quickly would keep investors interested. The abortive British annexation of the Transvaal was the most spectacular extension of British responsibilities in South Africa in this period but there had been others. Bechuanaland was, on the whole, an infertile territory but through it passed what was then called the Missionaries Road, although it was an important route long before the Christian missionaries came. Despite the British acquisition of Bechuanaland, in the following year, 1886, the balance of power in South Africa suddenly began to tilt in favour of the Boers.
