Charles Rudd

Charles Dunell Rudd ( born October 22, 1844 in Hanworth in North Norfolk, † November 15, 1916 in London ) was a business associate of Cecil Rhodes, co-founder of De Beers, who made a fortune in gold and diamond boom in the Cape Colony.

Rise

Rudd was a major figure in the South African diamond rush of the 19th century. He abandoned his studies at Trinity College ( Cambridge ) in 1865 and went as an adventurer in the Cape Colony. In 1872 he met Rhodes and became his business partners and representatives. He managed the difficult negotiations on the spot, while another partner named Alfred Beit care of the financing, the first in the purchase of mining rights in Kimberley, then in the founding of The Gold Fields of South Africa and later in Matabeleland in King Lobengula, 1888.

These acquisitions opened the way only to diamond monopoly in South Africa, then to the gold mines in Rhodesia. Both founded together with the De Beers Consolidated Mines Beit Company for diamonds, the British South Africa Company ( BSAC ) for gold and the colonization of Rhodesia. This name was in use in 1895 as a term for this region. It was the BSAC, which crushed the uprisings of the Ndebele and Shona in 1893 and 1897, and there were BSAC settlers who came to the Shangani Patrol killed.

1902 Rudd moved into private life to Scotland and bought a country estate in Ardnamurchan. He died in 1916 in a failed prostate surgery in London.