History Lesson on Cecil John Rhodes

I'm going to get there for a while. In fact, let me go and spoil it. I know I'm not going to get there for the next hour. Maybe you are new to the Jesse Kelly Show, let me go ahead and give it to you. I'm a history freak. I am not a historian. I'm a stupid, uneducated Barbarian. I was a marine and a construction worker. I went to community college. I just love history. I have since I was a child. I love history. I can't get

enough of it. And from time to time on this show, I will basically stop all commentary, food, politics, life, and I will just tell a history story of some kind. I would say every month every two months. I do this. Sometimes it's an hour, sometimes it's three hours. I try to not take up the whole show with that. For people who hate it, Well, we've kind of fallen into me, Chris Corey, we've kind of fallen into this. Hour two. We will do an hour and then we'll go back

to it. So here's the spoiler alert. The next hour is going to be history. It is going to be very applicable to America today, to communist insurgencies, world affairs, military affairs. There's a lot we can apply. I'm going to stop after an hour. We'll go back to the news. Tomorrow. Hour two we're picking it up again, and we'll keep doing it every day until I'm done with it. Okay, But there is a conflict that is relatively recent, I guess called the Rhodesian Bush War. But it is a conflict.

As I talk to people, some some know a lot about there seems to be no in between. There are people who know a lot about it, and there are people who know nothing about it. Almost nobody seems to know ah a little bit about it. Let me give you the reason why, in my opinion, having spent quite a while reading looking this up. It's been weeks I've been digging into this. It takes place in Africa, so

it's clear across the globe. It wasn't. Now America was involved, and we'll get to that, but it wasn't really an American thing. So Americans are not going to pay as much attention African wars in general, wars and famines and things like that are so common to us as we look at the news that one doesn't necessarily stand out over the others, so we don't look into that. It's just kind of one of those things that's gone by

most people. Another reason it goes by most Americans is your teachers in your government schools, if that's what you went to, and in your universities, if that's what you went to, most likely were communists or communists adjacent. And don't get me wrong, everybody at some point in time in this story doesn't necessarily look great, but there was

a lot of communist involvement here. In fact, it was the communists who destroyed Rhodesia, And therefore your fifth grade social studies teacher probably doesn't want to bring it up for the same reason they'll tell you two they're blue in the face about Hitler, but they don't want to really tell you about Mao and Stalin and all those things because it makes communism look bad, all right, So the people who don't know about it, those are kind of the reasons people don't know about it. Now, why

the other extreme? And we got a bunch of emails from people who are clearly Rhodesian bush war freaks. Why the other extreme? It is so fascinating, it's so fascinating. And because it's so fascinating in so many different ways, you can be obsessed with it. What kind of ways. Maybe you're a dude or even a chick who's into military stuff. We're going to be talking about one of the finest militaries, in my opinion, that has ever walked

the planet. Almost a spartan like society for reasons, I'll explain. Oh, so maybe you're into tribal warfare, that kind of stuff. I love that stuff too, as you know American Indians, things like that. It's got all kinds of that. So maybe military stuff is yours. Maybe political drama is your thing. Maybe different forms of government are your thing. Maybe diplomacy itself. This nation leaning on that nation, but they lean on

that nation. Whatever you happen to be into, it's in this and you can just wade into this story and not get near enough. I'm gonna break this down and it's gonna take me a while. And I promise you, promise you, if you are interested in what I'm talking about now, if you go start picking up books, you will learn so much more than I'm about to tell you. You'll learn new stuff. It's amazing, all right. Now, Remember when we did the Crappiest Country in the World, Crappiest

Country in the World tournament. How about we have Chris sixteen countries, sixteen countries in the Crappiest Country in the World tournament. One of those countries, maybe you remember, was a country named Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe. Huh, it's pretty rough. What was wrong with Zimbabwe? Well, there's the whole fifty percent unemployment thing. There's the whole you broke your arm, you show up at the hospital and they don't have any doctors thing. There's the no medicine, cabinets are empty, no

water in some places. It's so bad in Zimbabwe that people, when they have the means to do so, regularly flee. Now a truly truly terrible place. But that is interesting, you see, because if you were to rewind to not again, not ancient history, we'll call it nineteen sixty, Zimbabwe is the wealthiest country in all of Africa. You know how big Africa is, how many countries there are. It is not just wealthy as in there's a couple rich guys.

Families are on paved roads, air conditioning, people drive jaguarres up the road, wonderful modern schools, hospitals, universities. If I were to put a blindfold on you right now and rewind to the year nineteen sixty and put you in any American city, you could look around and see what life is like in a modern country. And then I would have blindfold you again and teleport you over to It was in Zimbabwe then, but to Zimbabwe of nineteen sixty.

You would not be able to tell the difference until the people started to speak and you heard the accent. So it was so wonderful in nineteen sixty. Why do people flee now, starve to death? Now? Why aren't their doctors? Why isn't their medicine. We're about to tell that story. Let us rewind. We're gonna go back into this is early, early, early that we're talking about the age of sailing ships. I'm gonna have to give you details that I normally don't give as I lay this out, because the base

of knowledge so many people have is lacking. Here. Don't feel bad about that. Most people don't have it right. So when I'm vague, it's because I've got too many details coming for you later. Rewind all the way back to the sailing ship age, the age of Christopher Columbus. The European powers. European powers are starting to take these wonderful sailing ships, and they're starting to cross the globe. They're looking for things, they're looking to claim new lands,

they're looking to claim new resources. One of those super powerful countries back then, which it's funny to think about this now because they're not very powerful, was Portugal. Portugal was big. Portugal starts bouncing around Africa. They round the southern tip of Africa and they start to move inland a little bit, and they find this climate that is kind of wonderful. When you think of Africa, you don't think about it that way, right, You probably think about

thick jungle. Maybe you're thinking about the Sahara, these vast sands and things like that. Of course those things exist, but remember Africa is huge. It stands to reason there would be parts of it where the climate is flat out pretty friggin nice. Portugal finds this climate, try to take this climate, and an African tribe we won't go into the details of that, fights a valiant war and

bounces to Portuguese. Portugal says, hey man, we're out. Portugal leaves, but the knowledge is there that there is kind of this little honey hole towards southern Africa not too shabby. From there, we will fast forward to the late eighteen hundreds. A is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Tuesday. You can email us Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com and I'm gonna get to some of those next hour and stuff like that, but you're just joining us. We're

talking history, the Rhodesian Bush War. Don't worry, you only miss ten minutes. This could be ten hours. I'm only gonna do hour two tonight. Don't worry. We'll be back to politics in it in forty five minutes or so. So Africa, let's go to the late eighteen hundreds. Now pause before we get to the late eighteen hundreds. There were a warlike people who started stomping the other African

tribes in southern Africa back in the day. If I were to ask you to name one African tribal warlord, you would probably be able to name zero or one. And the one you would probably name would be who do you know, Chris? Do you know Shaka Zulu? Shaka Zulu? Yeah, I knew, you knew it. Most people know their name when you say it. So what was Shaka Zulu's deal? Shakazulu was this incredible warlike leader. He led the Zulus in Africa. He revolutionized some things about combat back then.

We won't go into the details. It was their spears, and the Africans were used to throwing their spears. They can whatever. Shaka Zulu revolutionized some warlike things, and as happens throughout history, including today, the more powerful people will eventually begin conquering the less powerful people around them. He starts beating up on everyone, all right. Eventually he has somebody who breaks off from him. He essentially has some one of his general's rebel. The general rebels and heads

north all right now. This is the first one of the details I'm going to have to give you, And the only reason I'm giving giving you this detail is it's going to come up later. In fact, it's probably going to come up multiple times. We're in the era of Shakazulu and this is actually going to be a thread that goes throughout the Rhodesian Bush War. The people who break off are called the Indo Belly. The Indo Belly, don't worry if you don't remember the name, but that

is the warlike tribe that broke off from Shakazulu. They broke off, they went north. In case you're wondering, Shakazulu pursued them. It kind of broke off the chase whatever. They went north. Well, remember I already told you these people were incredibly warlike military advancements, and they started slaughtering and subjugating all the other tribes they came into contact with.

I'm not dogging on them. That's how life was then, and frankly now we live in a world of conquest, and it was ugly, and they ran across peaceful tribes and slaughtered them or made them slaves. They come across the area that is now known as Zimbabwe, and they discover exactly what I just talked to you about earlier. Wow, it's uh, it's kind of nice here. I think I'll stay. And because they were more powerful than the other tribes,

they moved in and set up shop. Now for the only other tribe, I swear on my life, I'm only going to give you two tribes because they're the two main ones. I could bring other ones to you, but it would only bore you and you would hate your life. The Shona the Shona, two tribes into belly and Shona into belly and shonah with me. This is really going to matter for later on, the Indo belly move in

and they subjugate the Shona. The Shona become the indobelly slaves, and it can be okay slavery, Remember where slavery can run the gamut throughout history. Sometimes slavery means, hey, you don't get paid, but you're the math tutor for my son. Here's a nice warm bed, go feed the horses and teach my son algebra. And sometimes slavery can be we'll work you to death in the salt mines. You'll probably die six months from now, right, it can run the gamut.

This also could run the gamut. Believe me when I tell you the Shona people had no rights whatsoever. You did never say in your government. They were slaves in every way, and in a lot of ways they were pillaged. But they did come to some sort of an existence where the Shona understood there were slaves. The end of Belly were ruling Zimbabwe. I'm going to continue to refer to this area as Zimbabwe until it turns to Rhodesia. So just hang with me. Remember this as a disclaimer,

it was not Zimbabwe at the time. There was nothing at this time nothing. There was no nation of any kindess or just tribes. Let's fast forward now to the eighteen hundreds to layed eighteen hundreds. The end of Belly are still ruling this area. Some guys want to go hunt some game in this area controlled by the End of Beelly. Everyone in Africa knew by now the Indobelly we're calling the shots there. These hunters didn't want to be disrespectful and they didn't want to end up on

the business end of a spear. So they stopped by the headquarters of the Indibelly king and they said Hey, you've got a lot of animals we want to shoot here. Can you mind if we give you a little this little that, you know, they exchange some goods. If it's okay with you, we're gonna go hunt. The King of the Endobelly said, hey, thanks for the gifts. I appreciate it. Yeah, go shoot some game. The guys take off. They go have a good time hunting in Africa. But they find something,

and it's so funny how life works. Sometimes one little discovery can lead to so many other things. The hunters keep running into tribal peoples and they're were in gold, not just one little gold thing, They're wearing a lot of gold. The hunters go back, actually they go to South Africa, South Africa, south of this and they start talking to people about what they discovered and what their plan was. Continue in a moment. It is the Jesse

Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Tuesday. If you miss any part of the show, you can download it on iHeart, Spotify, iTunes. And it was just talking to Jewish producer Chris about this during the break. Obviously Christmas is coming up, and you know how it works in radio, The reason your favorite radio host is gone for a couple of weeks at Christmas, your favorite TV host is gone, podcast or whoever is. Because this is the time of year where

they essentially force you to leave. All the advertisers leave, people are off work, nobody listens, so they say, don't come in. Don't come in obviously around Christmas. I have to take time too. This is gonna be some thing you could go back and listen to a couple of times. Listen to with the kids. When you miss me, I will be back. I'm gonna miss you too, trust me, I'm gonna miss you too. Back to our story, it's

the late eighteen hundreds. Some hunters just got back from Zimbabwe and they found gold, and, as the saying goes, loose lips sink ships. Because the hunters got back from Zimbabwe and they had done something very smart before they left. They went to the king and they said, hey, we kind of like this gold stuff you have going. Would you mind if we come back and take some of that. We're gonna give you a cut. We're not trying to do you wrong. We're gonna give you a cut. We'll

bring you this, we'll bring you that. But is it Okay, it'll be really small if we come back and get some of that gold. The king of the end of Belly, the ruling tribe at the time, said, ah, sure, knock yourself out. Go ahead, okay, the hunter get back to South Africa. Now I need to pause for a moment, and I'm probably gonna end up doing this a couple times, but I need to explain the geography of what we're talking about because it's going to matter a lot. So what I want you to do is I want you

to make a circle in your mind. Don't worry. You don't have to write it down. You can if you want a circle. This circle you just made is a clock, all right, a clock. Now from about six o'clock to about eight o'clock that border is South Africa to the south kind of the southwest. From six o'clock all the way to about twelve o'clock that is Mozambique. That is going to be huge for the purposes of our story. But I'll come back to it to work about memorizing that. Now.

The other two countries are not as important. Just know that north because it will come up is Zambia, all right. Zambia Mozambique, South Africa. The hunters go back to South Africa six and eight o'clock. Okay. Instead of shutting their mouths about the gold in the agreement they got, they start to talk. And that was a really bad idea because there was a man in South Africa who had an unbelievable amount of money and power and Hu wanted more of it. And his name was Cecil Roads or

Cecil Roads. All these names are pronounced differently depending on what you're listening to a reading. I'm gonna call him Cecil Roads because that was the most common who was Cecil Roads. First, he was a brit The Brits are going to play a huge part. This is a British story, really a British story. He was a major, major power player in Britain, super wealthy guy. Now what's he doing

over there? Well, this is the late eighteen hundreds. Britain is aware that most of their colonial age has probably passed it by, but they haven't given up the game yet. They still want to find other lands, far off lands to take over, to mind, to find a place for their people to you know, they're an empire that likes to expand Britain also had something else they did, and

they did it very very well, very successfully. Multiple times throughout their history they would almost allow their conquests to be privatized in a way where you can go conquer this land. No, no, take some British people raise an army if you like. In fact, we want you to, and you have our permission, but we're not really officially do it. You see, we're washing our hands of it. If you would like to go do something and it works out, we'll be there to help out and of

course take over in the end. Cecil Rhoads he essentially steals this agreement from these hunters, and Cecil Rhodes decides he likes the idea of this Zimbabwe place, he likes the climate. He thinks agriculture could get big there. Mining is very clearly going to get big there. And by the way, Zimbabwe ended up being really big on things like chrome and stuff like that. But Cecil Rhoads is one of these you'd call him a billionaire type conquistador

is essentially what he was. So Central Road or Cecil Rhoades does something. He goes to the King of Zimbabwe, the exact same king, the miners had dealt with and he in a way, I guess, rips him off. Maybe maybe not. Here's how the deal went. Hey, you know how these we're gonna mine a little bit here, We're not. We'd like to mine a lot here. And I understand your concerns about this, King, I'd totally get that it's your land. Wanna be clear it's your land. Just to

prove to you that it's your land. Because we're gonna be bringing all these people through here. We'll build you some roads. We're gonna have roads and stuff like that. We're gonna give you some guns as well. They didn't necessarily specify the age of the guns. But these are people with shields and spears. Hey, King, I know you like to rule over the people around you. How about some superior weaponry. They even promised him they would bring

him a gun boat that went up the river. They didn't end up delivering on the gunboat, but they did bring some guns. The king call him naive, but Hindsights twenty twenty says, you know what I like the sounds of that. I want some roads. I want some guns. Come on in roads, raises what essentially amounts to an entire civil society for this invasion. When I say civil society, I mean there are troops, but there are more than troops.

There are doctors, there are lawyers, there are miners, are there's really every major aspect of the society you can think of, if any society you can think of, certainly a modern society. Cecil Roads raises these people from South Africa, from Britain, they come from all other places. But this is actually going to be an important part of the story as well. I find it fascinating. It's almost like a like a weird society that was grown in a lab.

He wasn't grabbing the dregs of every society. He wasn't emptying the prisons or grabbing this guy who who was down on his luck. He actually went to the high class society, people established families, wealthy families, educated people, and he said, hey, your son's a doctor, Come on down, Hey,

do you want a lot of farmland your daughter? He took what essentially amounted to the cream of the crop and invaded Zimbabwe with the permission of the king, with all of these people, and he starts carving roads in is Zimbabwe. He starts building armies This is all done with the permission of the British Crown. And again it's just cheaper and easier for the British Crown to say, hey, cecil, have at it. You have our permission. We're not gonna bother.

We're we're not sending our people. You just go and they this society will call it five hundred people because that's roughly how many he came and with originally walk into this country, totally foreign country. You have a king, this tribe, and the king has a slave tribe that's under him, and you have all this other stuff, and they start hacking out a living in the middle of this wild African land. It wasn't again known as Zimbabwe at this time, but they would have one day be

known as Zimbabwe. Now. There eventually began to be some chafing with the relationships. We'll talk about some chafing. Next is the Jesse Kelly Show on a fantastic, fantastic Tuesday. We are almost to the end of our our first hour on the Rhodesian Bush, where I know it's the second hour of the show. I'm just gonna do ten more minutes on this and then return to the story tomorrow. Remember if you miss any part of the show, iHeart

Spotify iTunes. All right, next hour we have all kinds of stuff to get to the administrative state and layoffs and Marjorie Taylor and emails and other things. But back to our story here, all right. So these this society of miners and troops and things like that under Cecil Roads, they go into Zimbabwe. They strike an agreement with the king. This is the late eighteen hundreds. Remember eighteen nineties. I already told you there are two different African tribes here.

There's more than two, but for the sake of simplicity, there's two major ones, the Endo Belly, the ruling tribe, and the Shona, the less powerful tribe. In eighteen ninety three, a tribal war breaks out. Now I need to set something up before the tribal war breaks out. I need to explain that in these early years for the settlers or colonizers or whatever you want to call them, for Cecil Roads in the Crew, this is not at all a pleasant time of plenty, not at all. This is

a completely uncivilized place as far as civilization goes. For them, it's hard to get supplies in. They are having to essentially carve out civilization from nothing. And it's tough, sledden, very very very tough. So these are people, believe me, They're not sitting around being fanned by African slaves. They are working their fingers to the bone. There is disease,

there is deprivation. It's very very hard. Now eighteen ninety three, these two tribes breakout in the war, I say a war, but as per usual, the Indobelly were more powerful at the time. In the ind of Belly start to slaughter the Shona who had been their slaves, and a different kind of a slaughter than the Europeans were used to. I'm gonna refer to them as Europeans a lot, because that's mainly the background of these people. They watched children

being burned alive by the end of Beelly. The end of Belly were given orders by their king, Hey, don't lay a finger on the Europeans. Go ahead, slaughter the Shona, kill them all. I don't care, but whatever you do, do not touch the Europeans. He was very aware that he was in a dangerous situation and should not offend the Europeans. But I remember that talk we had after hamas invaded Israel on October seventh, in what was a raid.

Remember that talk we had about how there's a way of doing things, about how you're gonna have a hard time finding a sympathetic ear if you can't stop yourself from burning babies in an oven when people come across that, you're going to ruin your reputation. Let's just say the Indobelly ruined their reputation. They were essentially spearing pregnant women five feet away from Europeans. The Europeans are looking at

this and they cannot believe what they're seeing. Now in defense, I can't believe I'm about to say this, in defense of the Indobelly who were doing the spearing and burning. That's how it had always been in Africa with these tribal wars. That's how tribal wars had always looked. That's how they'd always sounded. It was always slaughter, it was always horrible. They were doing what they had always done.

But the Europeans certainly were not used to that way of living, and they certainly had not been introduced to it right in front of them. They are freaking mortified. The Europeans are mortified, and they decide, Okay, I can see we're gonna have to square things away here. The Europeans have had enough of this and they arm the army. I know the Indo Beelly have some guns already, but they didn't have something called the Maxim gun. The Maxim gun is one of the first known machine guns that

was ever employed. And that war went about like you would expect. The Europeans step in and say, you guys are freaking savages and this is no longer your area. We are not going to handle that. We are not going to allow this. You're going to die. The Indobelly fight a war against the Europeans and it went about like you would expect. Yes, the Europeans lost a patrol, they got two cocky This twenty man patrol went out and got surrounded by a thousand Indebelli got slaughtered and

it was ugly thing. But for the most part, the Europeans just absolutely mopped the floor with the Indo Belly, wipe them out gone, and in their minds, because of the slaughter they had witnessed before, they felt like they had every justification now to do what they'd always wanted. And let's be honest, it's what they always wanted, create a new colony, a new country. They were already colonizing it, but that gave them everything they needed to say, we

are in charge now. King, you're no longer the king. You don't rule anything here. We Europeans, we now own this country. But this is a very very big country, a very very big country. At one point in our story, when when this uncharted becomes Rhodesia, and it's about to become Rhodesia tomorrow, they're going to have a two thousand mile border, two thousand miles. Don't think of this place as some tiny little place. It is a place that is gigantic, with mountains and rivers in thick woods, and

it's a huge, huge place. There aren't that many of them. How do you start a country from what amounts to essentially nothing. You've got teachers, you've got doctors, you got miners, you got things like that, but you have to start the process of a whole new country. And that process begins tomorrow, and it'll be bloody too.