William Beinart
Cecil Rhodes: Statue Controversies in the Light of History
Summary
Since 2015 there has been intense controversy over statues of Cecil Rhodes at the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford, taken up in national and global debates about history, race, colonialism and ‘culture wars’. At the heart of these controversies were assertions and arguments about Rhodes as a historical actor. Beinart’s talk will largely focus on aspects of his role as Cape and Imperial politician in the 1880s and 1890s, and address current questions briefly from this perspective.
William Beinart
William Beinart is emeritus professor at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He worked at Rhodes, Bristol, and Oxford from 1976 to 2015, and has written largely on South African and environmental history. He has authored numerous books, beginning with Twentieth-Century South Africa (2001) and most recently The Scientific Imagination in South Africa: 1700 to the Present (2021 with Saul Dubow). He served on Oriel College’s commission to advise on the Rhodes legacy and statue.