After some initial success finding diamonds, Rhodes formed de Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., named after the Nicolaas de Beers family mining claims he acquired.

For eight years Rhodes divided his time between mining in Kimberley, South Africa, and studies at Oxford, where he fell under the spell of fine arts professor John Ruskin.

For eight years Rhodes divided his time between mining in Kimberley, South Africa, and studies at Oxford, where he fell under the spell of fine arts professor John Ruskin.

The son of a prosperous wine merchant, Ruskin had departed from mainstream thinking to the extent that one biographer described his as “an inwardly difficult, lonely life, often pursued and struck at by madness.” Given to frequent masturbation and nympholepsy (a frenetic fondness for underage girls), Ruskin nevertheless failed to consummate his marriage to nineteen-year-old Effie Gray in 1848. Six years later, still a virgin, she had the marriage annulled, a shocking development in those times.

The son of a prosperous wine merchant, Ruskin had departed from mainstream thinking to the extent that one biographer described his as “an inwardly difficult, lonely life, often pursued and struck at by madness.” Given to frequent masturbation and nympholepsy (a frenetic fondness for underage girls), Ruskin nevertheless failed to consummate his marriage to nineteen-year-old Effie Gray in 1848. Six years later, still a virgin, she had the marriage annulled, a shocking development in those times.

Ruskin was an ardent student of the King James Version of the Bible but eventually gave up his belief in God. “John Ruskin, the man who inspired Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner, and those who formed the Round Table secret society, was himself influenced by the esoteric writings of [Greek philosopher] Plato and by Madame Blavatsky [founder of the occult Theosophy Society], the books of Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the secret societies in the mold of the Order of the Golden Dawn,” wrote author Icke.

Ruskin, who reportedly read Plato’s Republic every day, embraced Plato’s concept of the perfect society being one that had structure imposed from centralized leadership—a ruling class—downward. Marx and Engels, the founders of modern Communism, also were students of Plato and echoed Ruskin’s views. Advocating tight central control over the state, either by a dictator or a special ruling class, Ruskin proclaimed, “My continual aim has been to show the eternal superiority of some men to others, sometimes even of one man to all others.”

According to Quigley, Rhodes was so stirred by Ruskin’s philosophies that he copied one of his Oxford lectures in long-hand and kept it with him for thirty years.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Temple and the Lodge, showed that Rhodes was active in British Freemasonry, which involved him with other prominent nineteenth century persons such as the royals George IV and William, as well as Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston’s father), Marquis of Salisbury, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and Oscar Wilde. This group’s preoccupation with the philosophies of Plato, Ruskin, and the Theosophist Madame Blavatsky coincided with the ideals of Freemasonry.

With the aid of a close friend, German diamond merchant Alfred Beit, Rhodes expanded his diamond company until, by 1891, de Beers owned 90 percent of the world’s diamond production. In the mid-1890s Rhodes founded the Diamond Syndicate, forerunner of today’s Central Selling Organization which controls almost 80 percent of the worldwide diamond trade.

He also gained large control over the rapidly developing Transvaal gold mines. With ever-expanding wealth, Rhodes’s dreams also grew to include plans for a railroad from South Africa to Cairo and expanding the British Empire to include that century-long dream of reclaiming the American colonies.

As with the Morgans and Rockefellers, behind Rhodes we find the vast power of the Rothschild family.

“They were financiers to Cecil Rhodes, making it possible for him to establish a monopoly over the diamond fields of South Africa,” wrote author Griffin. “They are still connected with the de Beers.”

In November 1997, when Baron Edmond Adolphe Maurice Jules Jacques de Rothschild died at age seventy-one from emphysema in Geneva, it was reported that he left substantial holdings in de lUrrs Consolidated Mines, Ltd. of South Africa.

Lending support for a relationship between Rhodes and the Roth schilds was author and former British Intelligence Officer Dr. John Coleman, who wrote,

“Rhodes was the principal agent for the Rothschilds . . . [who] dispossessed the South African Boers of their birth right, the gold and diamonds that lay beneath their soil.”

According to Coleman, Rhodes’s first Round Table group was established in South Africa with funding from the British Rothschild family to train business leaders loyal to Britain in ways to maintain control over that country’s wealth. The idea of Rothschild funding behind Rhodes also was supported by author Frank Aydelotte, who wrote in American Rhodes Scholarships, “In 1888 Rhodes made his third will . . . leaving everything to Lord Rothschild “

The Round Tables started out as a collection of semisecret groups formed along the lines of the Illuminati and Freemasonry with “inner” and “outer” circles and a pyramid hierarchy. The inner circle was called the Circle of Initiates (or the Elect) while the outer circle was called the Association of Helpers. Two members of Rhodes’s inner Circle of Initiates were British financiers Lord Victor Rothschild and Lord Milner.

Rhodes called his secret society the Round Table after the legendary meeting place of King Arthur. It should be noted that the Arthurian legend concerning the Holy Grail is closely connected to the controversial notion of a continuing bloodline from Jesus—the Sangreal or royal blood which shall be discussed later.

Coleman wrote that, armed with immense wealth gained from control of gold, diamonds and drugs, “Round Tablers fanned out throughout the world to take control of fiscal and monetary policies and political leadership in all countries where they operated.”

Setting an example for today’s interlocking corporate directorships and tax-exempt foundations,

“The Round Table itself consists of a maze of companies, institutions, banks and educational establishments, which in itself would take qualified insurance actuaries a year to sort out,” according to Coleman.

While some might dismiss Coleman as a conspiracy theorist, they could not say the same of Dr. Quigley.

“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act,” confirmed Quigley. “I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the yearly 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. … In general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”

Quigley’s words were echoed by authors Wallechinsky and Wallace who quoted from Rhodes’s will. It called for “the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be the extension of British rule throughout the world . . . [to include] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America.”

In 1890 Queen Victoria, impressed with his imperialistic views, named Rhodes prime minister of Africa’s Cape Colony. Upon his death from heart disease in 1902, Rhodes’s reputation as an inflexible businessman and politician was softened by the news of his generous scheme to provide scholarships to Oxford for promising young men. Though Rhodes was praised for prohibiting the disqualification of applicants on the basis of race, it is clear he remained a product of his time since he once affirmed his desire for “equal rights for every white man.”

Rhodes himself was thought to have been a member of a covert group known as the “Olympians” after the Greek gods. According to author Coleman, this was merely another name for the globalists he termed the Committee of 300. Additionally, Rhodes was thought to have been connected to the secretive and mysterious Illuminati as well, most probably through his Masonic connections.

Quigley identified Rhodes’s secret society in the plural as the Round Table Groups, which had added branches in seven nations by 1915. Though created by Curtis and others, funding for the society came principally from Rhodes’s followers and Lord Milner.

“Since 1925 there have been substantial contributions from wealthy individuals and from foundations and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J. P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families …” Quigley added, not mentioning the Rothschilds by name.

With Rhodes’s death, Milner, Rothschild, and their international banker associates gained complete control over the Round Tables, which began expanding far beyond the British Empire. Professor Quigley explained, “At the end of the war of 1914, it hivamc clear that the organization of this [Round Table] system had to be greatly extended.” Lionel Curtis was called upon to establish the Royal Institute of International Affairs as an umbrella organization for the Round Table Groups.

Quigley saw the goals of these groups—the chief aim of which apparently was to form the world’s nations into one English-speaking entity so as to maintain peace and bring both stability and prosperity to underdeveloped areas—as “largely commendable.”

In a great irony, the Round Table organization—which professed world peace as a primary goal—may have directly led to the development of the atomic bomb. During its expansion period, the Round Tables established many splinter organizations, one of which was the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. This was the “American copy of All Souls College at Oxford,” according to Quigley. The IAS was funded liberally by the Rockefeller General Education Board. It was here that the scientists working on the atom bomb were assisted by IAS members Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein.

For all that, Quigley wrote admiringly, “They were gracious and cultured gentlemen of somewhat limited social experience who were much concerned with the freedom of expression of minorities and the rule of law for all “

Other writers have not been so complimentary. Journalist William T. Still in his book New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies wrote of “the centuries-old plans of secret societies to wrench the Constitution from the citizens of the United States.”

“Rhodes committed the same error made by so many humanitarians before him,” wrote author William Bramley, “he thought that he could accomplish his goals through the channels of the corrupted Brotherhood network. Rhodes therefore ended up creating institutions which promptly fell into the hands of those who would effectively use those institutions to oppress the human race.”