Indeed, contrary to claims that his actions were uncontroversial at the time, the inauguration of Rhodes as an honorary doctorate of civil law in 1899 stirred anger amongst the academic community. As historian Paul Maylam notes in his book The Cult of Rhodes, his peers correctly understood and rejected the injustice of elevating as a legal doctorate a man responsible just three years earlier for something “as illegal as the Jameson Raid”; a botched land-grabbing raid that helped to incite the second Boer War. Given the rightful opposition to his actions at the time, it is not impossible that Rhodes could foresee how later generations would view him, and his legacy building – in the form of scholarships and monuments – was a way of bribing the perception of his life by future generations.