Which historic figure does William Bolitho refer to with "The greatest adventurer that ever lived ended as a nervous, banal millionaire"?
Upvote:2
I vote for Cecil Rhodes.
First, the author, William Bolitho Ryall was a South African, as was Rhodes.
Second, Rhodes was mightier than most of the others, insofar as he had a (former) country, "Rhodesia" named after him. (Alexander the Great "only" had cities like Alexandria named after him; Napoleon, "nothing".) Although technically just a wealthy private citizen, Rhodes basically ran his personal fortune as a "supranational" entity that dabbled in international affairs. (Think of George Soros and his private "war" with the Bank of England in the early 1990s.) Rhodes hired a mercenary force that basically started the Boer War.
On the more constructive side, he conceived the idea of a "Cape to Cairo" transcontinental railway under British control. He is the reason why the British empire in Africa extends north from South Africa to the future Bechuanaland (Botswana) and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe, Zambia). This became a reality after World War I when Britain captured intervening German territory in modern Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania to connect to Egypt and the Sudan.
The winding down of the Boer War coincided with his personal "twilight," and his last public acts were "academic," establishing the "Rhodes scholarship" and donating land to the University of Cape Town. After the high drama of this earlier life, the substantial realization of his goals (and the slight chance before his death that they might fail), made him a "nervous, banal, millionaire."
Upvote:3
There is a more subtle tragedy that waits for adventurers than ruin, penurious old age, rags, contempt. It is that he is doomed to cease to be an adventurer. The law of his morphology is that, setting out a butterfly, he is condemned when his development is ripe to become a caterpillar. The vocation of adventure is as tragic as that of Youth ; its course is parabolic, not straight; so that at a certain point it leads back to the cage again. The greatest adventurer that ever lived ended as a nervous, banal millionaire. joshvahvmphreys.com/
Google books has a more extensive quote, but google books makes it nearly impossible to reference the quote. Bolitho repeatedly refers to "the adventurer" as an abstract figure, not as a specific individual.
There appears to be an argument that this is L Ron Hubbard, but quite frankly I haven't the patience to read any argument that includes the name L Ron Hubbard. There are better things to do with my time. There are counterarguments at GerryArmstrong
More post
- 📝 When did husbands & wives start sharing bedrooms?
- 📝 What is the difference between an extensive revolution and an intensive revolution?
- 📝 How did Hitler get off so lightly after the Beer Hall Putsch?
- 📝 How did the accounting and capital organization system work in communist countries like the USSR? Did ideology justify or undermine the system?
- 📝 Did syphilis, polio, hepatitis, and encephalitis come to general world from the Americas?
- 📝 Did any civil resistence against the allied occupation of Japan exist?
- 📝 Why is Russian far east less populated than Chinese north east regions?
- 📝 Why were Red Army Officers and soldiers not prosecuted for War Crimes in WWII?
- 📝 Did the Ottomans conquer Poland-Lithuania?
- 📝 Nuremberg Laws - Did they affect existing marriages between Jews and Non-Jews?
- 📝 In a broad sense, what are the reasons for the history-spanning persecution of Jews?
- 📝 What happened to the French gold at Martinique during WW2
- 📝 Who, if any, in JFK's inner circle argued against the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion?
- 📝 Was the use of imperial nicknames in ancient Rome meant as an insult?
- 📝 Did the Dominion of Newfoundland establish diplomatic missions?
- 📝 How did lecturers magnify their voice in the days before amplification?
- 📝 Where were ancient Romans supposed to dispose of their waste and garbage?
- 📝 Why was Axis intelligence so poor in relation to Operation Uranus?
- 📝 Was the penal system used to colonise Australia?
- 📝 Did the Germans attempt the easier or harder of two possible objectives in the Caucasus?
- 📝 Why Oppress a Negligible Population (Stolen Generations)?
- 📝 How did the ancestors of proto-Malagasy in South Borneo reach Madagascar?
- 📝 Has any U.S. Vice President not been nominated as presidential candiate although he ran as candiate?
- 📝 How were ethnographic maps in the 19th century made?
- 📝 Examples of Romans repeating early stages of the cursus honorum
- 📝 How long did it take arriving passengers to become indentured servants and where did they stay until then?
- 📝 What was the age of majority in England in the 1870s?
- 📝 How long did it take to build siege engines in the middle ages?
- 📝 When and where did praying with eyes closed originate?
- 📝 Was there Nazi Collaboration at an Institutional level in Poland?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Which historic figure does William Bolitho refer to with "The greatest adventurer that ever lived ended as a nervous, banal millionaire"?
- 📝 Which historical figure is attributed with the most death of his people?
- 📝 Under which conditions does the losing party actively commemorate a battle?
- 📝 Which war games did Napoleon practice with his generals?
- 📝 Why does a Star of David appear at a rally with Francisco Franco?
- 📝 Why does the CIA report on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich refer to it as "Operation Salmon" rather than "Operation Anthropoid"?
- 📝 Is there a field of study which attempts to document historic experiences of ordinary individuals?
- 📝 How does one wash with sand?
- 📝 Does Taleb's claim of epidemics with a death count of >1,000 being in the lower hundreds (in the last 2,500 years) seem accurate?
- 📝 Which car was the first to come with a cigarette lighter receptacle?
- 📝 After the American Civil War, which states had the most problems with rejoining the Union?
- 📝 Does any copy exist of the Papal bull which authorized the Spanish Inquisition?
- 📝 Why does the first decade of the 21st century start with 2000?
- 📝 Which town or village in Britain lost the greatest percentage of men in WWI due to "Pals Battalions"?
- 📝 Is (or was) there a version of the Maltese Cross with the right arrowhead missing? Does it have a name?
- 📝 In which direction does the thumb point in the "pollice verso?"
- 📝 Which French Revolutionary figure thought black slaves could oversee monkeys for labor?
- 📝 Which figure is this a statue of?
- 📝 Which side of the Atlantic does the jack-o'-lantern come from?
- 📝 Which German cities does this article in The Economist allege that Britain destroyed?
- 📝 WW1 Uniform - Which country does this uniform belong to?
- 📝 Does any evidence exist that suggests Hitler’s primary reason for declaring war on America was an attempt to draw Japan into his war with Russia?
- 📝 What does the first Versal in Book of Kells refer to?
- 📝 Does the ≈400,000 figure for US soldiers killed in WW2 include the ≈80,000 MIA?
- 📝 What does this source "IAA iii" mean? Which book?
- 📝 Are there any images from ancient times in which Heracles is shown with a cornucopia?
- 📝 To whom does Napoleon refer in this letter to Josephine?
- 📝 What wars were there which were contemporaneous with but unconnected to ww2?
- 📝 Does Historiography have a usual technical term for historical writing which makes factual claims without giving references for them?
- 📝 Where does Marsilio Ficino write that all nations worship a God whose name is spelled with four letters?