Rafaella Rusmigo
Erasmus Student MUP
12/7/2015

Kenya

Abstract
Throughout time, we have seen countries evolve from many different circumstances, most of which circumstances were from colonial exploitation. European colonialism dates back to the age of exploration and the discoveries that were found overseas from the mainland of Europe. The colonists were brutal to the natives called savages, ruthless to the innocent, and exploiters of the native people and their native lands.
In Africa, the Europeans had penetrated it in the 1600-1700’s. In the 1800’s the entire continent did not have a single free independent nation state, all of Africa belonged to the Europeans. Kenya was significantly impact by the imperialists. The historical evidence of Kenya’s economy, culture, and social standards comes from the British rule from 1888-1963.
The main purpose of this document is to understand the fundamentals of British colonialism and the British conquest in Kenya. Through examining important points in the history of Kenya, we will found out what are the legacies of the colonial period for Kenya and if they are still relevant to the country today.
Republic of Kenya
Kenya is a country in East Africa with its territory lying on the equator and overlies the East African Rift covering a diverse and expansive terrain that extends roughly from Lake Victoria to Lake Turkana and further south-east to the Indian Ocean. It is bordered by Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east.
Kenya covers 581,309 km² and had a population of approximately 45 million people according to the last recording, in July 2014. The capital and largest city is Nairobi, which is a regional commercial hub. The economy of the country is the largest by GDB in East and Central Africa.
There are over 70 distinct ethnic groups in Kenya who can be divided into three broad linguistic groups: Bantu, Nilotic and Cushite. While no ethnic group constitutes a majority of Kenya's citizens, the largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, makes up only 20% of the nation's total population, The five largest ethnic groups (Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kamba and Kalenjin) there constitute around 97% of Kenya's citizens and they are affiliated with its 32 major indigenous groups. As a result, Kenya is a multilingual country but however their official languages are English and Swahili.
Importance of Kenya
Kenya was once a powerful thriving country in Africa with many opportunities and many resources to offer so there are a number of reasons why the British colonized Kenya. In general, they are the same types of reasons that the British had for most of their colonization.
Firstly, the British saw Kenya as a potential source of wealth because of the raw materials like ivory and gold. Kenya’s fertile highlands attracted many European farmers. Some areas seemed to have the right sort of climate and soil for settlement and farming.
In addition, there was a European competition for colonization of Africa, from Germany, Portugal, France, and Belgium, among others, which had process of colonizing substantial portions of Africa. Colonization was a competitive process, and every area the British could colonize was an area another country could not and this was giving them more prestige.
But the British wanted Kenya mainly because it gave way to Uganda, which was a strategic source of the Nile River. Uganda was important for the control of the Suez Canal and Egypt, so having authority over Kenya made it all the easier to control the state of Uganda, which led to much more possibilities for the British. That is why Britain felt the urge to take over and control the land of Kenya.
Pre-colonial Period
The history of Kenya dates as early as 2000 BC when a patchwork of ethnic groups, each with their own culture and language, settled in the country. They came from every corner of Africa: Turkanas from Ethiopia, Kikuyu, Akamba and Meru from West Africa and the Masai, Luo and Samburu from the southern part of Sudan.
By around the 8th century Arabs, Indians, Persians and even Chinese were arriving on the Kenyan coast to trade skins, ivory, gold and spices. Arab dominance on the coast was eclipsed by the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498. Portuguese explorers headed by Vasco da Gama were among the earliest Europeans to set foot on the African continent, arriving on the eastern coast. The goal was to establish naval bases to protect Portugal’s growing trade routes in the Indian Ocean going to the Far East after land trails to India had earlier been blocked by Ottoman Turks. In 1593, Mombasa became the site for its Fort Jesus meant to strengthen Portuguese economic hegemony that continuously got threatened by the presence of Dutch, English and Ottoman Arabs throughout the 1600s.
Kenya history shows that it was the Ottoman Arabs that directly challenged Portuguese influence in the region, besieging its Fort and attacking its navies. After decades of skirmishes, Ottomans of the Omani sultanate under Seyyid Said defeated the Portuguese in Kenya in the early 18th century. By 1730, the Ottomans have expelled Portuguese settlers and traders of fossil from the Tanzanian, Kenyan, Cancun, Mexico coasts. The period was coincident with the waning years of the Portuguese Empire.
The Islamic period showed that the Omani Arab regime in Kenya focused on coastal trade and intensified slave trade. Then, British interests in securing their Indian trade routes started pressuring the Omani Arab regime. By late 19th century, the regime’s slave trade fell to the British but the Omani Arabs did not context the Royal Navy in enforcing British anti-slavery policies since the trade served only the Europeans. With little to no resistance, the Omani Arab regime in Kenya slowly eroded with the growth of British and German trading competition during which time several key ports were seized in the 1880s. It was 1887 when the private British East Africa Company, leased a 10-mile wide stretch of land along the Kenyan coast from Seyyid Said. This was seminal to the eventual British colonization of Kenya.
Berlin Conference
The roots of the colonial history of Kenya go back to the Berlin Conference in 1885, when East Africa was first divided into territories of influence by the European powers. The conference was held in Germany and each member had the right to ‘pursue’ legal ownership of land. It was marked as the official start of the Scramble for Africa by European powers: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. At the Berlin Conference, two European powers, Britain and Germany, expressed interest in the East African Community (EAC). To resolve the dispute amicably the two Powers signed a treaty in 1886 in which they agreed that Germany would lay claim to the coast of present day Tanzania and Britain retained access to the area in which Kenya and Uganda lie. Britain did not take up direct administration of the region under its Sphere of influence rather it gave the right to administer to a commercial company, the Imperial British East African Company (IBEAC).
Imperial British East African Company
The British Government founded the Imperial British East African Company in 1895, by encouraging Sir William Mackinnon who was running a shipping company at the coast, to take up the responsibility. Sir Mackinnon formed a British East Africa Association which led to the IBEAC. In 1887, the company was granted a concession of administration in East Africa. Upon being chartered in 1888, IBEAC assumed administrative control of British East Africa. IBEAC was expected to govern the exportation and management of goods and agriculture, and facilitate the construction of a railway connecting the EAC to Lake Victoria. IBEAC built stations at Machakos in Kamba territory and in Kikuyu. At the coast they had station agents at Kismayu, Lamu, Witu, Malindi, Takaungu, and Vanga with the central administration at Mombasa.
In 1890, Fredrick Lugard had the company’s first Kikuyu station built at Dagoretti. In April 1891 Waiyaki wa Hinga led the local resistance that forced the British to evacuate and then destroyed the fort. In 1890, IBEAC started building the Mackinnon-Sclater road, a 1000km ox-cart track from Mombasa to Busia on the Uganda border. The part of the road called the “Mackinnon road” linked Mombasa and Kibwezi. It was built by an Australian called George Wilson. Captain B.L. Sclater was the engineer responsible for building the road from Kibwezi to Uganda.
IBEAC did not complete the construction of the road. Rival factions of the company’s operations in Uganda (the Kabaka, French Catholics, Protestants) objected to the company’s plan to construct a fortified location in Uganda. The conflict was not resolved amicably and in 1892 civil war broke out in Buganda kingdom Though IBEAC won in the war, it proved to be the company’s final undoing. Even before the war, IBEAC was already struggling financially due to customs issues, the money spent funding this skirmish all but bankrupted it. The company went bankrupt in 1895.
The East Africa Protectorate: 1895-1920
The British government dissolved IBEAC and on 1st of July 1895, it proclaimed a protectorate over the region, and the administration transferred to the Foreign Office. The region called British East Africa was renamed the East Africa Protectorate. The protectorate was administered from Zanzibar, the residence of the first Commissioner, Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge.
In 1895, the British government took over and claimed the interior as far west as Lake Naivasha, it set up the East Africa Protectorate. In 1902, the border was extended to Uganda and in 1920 the enlarged protectorate, except for the original coastal strip, became a crown colony. After dissolution of the IBEAC, the British government completed the construction of the Mackinnon-Sclater road, from Mombasa to Busia. The road reached Port Victoria in December 1896.
In 1896 construction of the Kenya-Uganda railway started. During this period, thousands of Indians were brought into Kenya to work on building the railway line and subsequently settled there, whilst inviting many of their kith and kin who were mainly traders from India to join them. Captain Sclater brought the first bullock wagon into the interior in January 1896, just seven months after the commencement of construction of the Uganda railway
In 1902, administration of the territory was transferred from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office and the Uganda territory was incorporated as part of the protectorate. By declaring a protectorate over British East Africa, the British government had established direct control over the region and opened up the fertile highlands to White settlers in 1902. Sir Charles Norton Eliot, commissioner of British East Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, is credited with having initiated the policy of white supremacy in the British East Africa protectorate.
The Native Hut Tax was had been put into law in 1901 through the Hut Tax Regulations of 1901. The tax was charged on all huts used as dwellings at a rate of Rs 2 (2 Rupees) per annum. In 1903, the Hut Tax was raised to Rs 3. The tax could also be paid in kind including labour. The occupier of the hut was responsible for paying the tax. In this largely polygamous society, if a man had many huts he had to raise money for all the huts or work with some of his wives and sons. From 1910 women living in their own huts were required to pay Hut Tax.
In 1905, a settler named Lord Hindlip, summed up the European attitude on taxes when he wrote “I am sure that as far as possible taxes should be paid entirely in labour or in cash. A demand for cash should be created among the natives, who would have to obtain coin in order to pay their taxes”.
In 1907 the British colonial administration was moved from Mombasa to Nairobi.
In 1910, Poll Tax Ordinance was introduced in order to prevent circumvention of Native Hut Tax. This Ordinance empowered the Commissioner to impose tax on anyone who was not covered by the Hut Tax. All African males 25 years and older were required to pay Poll Tax.
The process of monetization is whereby people took to using a medium of exchange that does not necessarily have a direct utility in itself. Monetization in the East African region at the East African coast began with the use of the silver Maria Theresa thaler (silver bullion coin). Prior to monetization exchange was done in terms of goods. Wire, cloth and beads were the items most used but they were not necessarily homogeneous, particularly different colored beads were needed for different locations.
During the First World War from 1914 to 1918, the British used over 50,000 African troops and over one million African followers. Approximately 24,000 Kenyans were killed fighting for the British in World War 1. According to "Kenya: From Colonization to Independence, 1888-1970, R. Mugo Gatheru" approximately 163,000 Africans served in the Carrier Corps and about 124,000 have died of influenza.
Soldiers on the British government front in the World War 1 were drawn from the King’s African Rifles. KAR was a multi-battalion British colonial regiment raised from British possessions in East Africa from 1902 to the 1960s. Soldiers of the KAR were recruited from Somaliland, British East Africa, Uganda, Nyasaland, and following its transfer after World War 1 in Tanganyika. In 1914, KAR comprised of 70 British officers, 3 British non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and 2,325 Africans. By the end of World War 1, the KAR consisted of 22 battalions, 1,193 British officers, 1,497 British NCOs and 30,658 Africans.
In 1914 no carrier organisation existed, so one had to be rapidly improvised. The Carrier Corps was a military organisation created in Kenya in World War 1 to provide military labour to support the British campaign against the German Military forces in East Africa, commanded by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. It was a military labour organisation which ultimately conscripted over 400,000 African men for porterage and other support tasks. There were three main carrier forces, based on the East Africa Protectorate, on Uganda and on Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia.
At the end of the war, Kenya's economy was suffering. White employers cut the wages of black workers. Uunrest and rebellion followed. Numerous protest organizations emerged, mostly among people of the Kikuyu tribe, who expressed grievances over taxes, labor policies and the sense that they were second class citizens in their own homeland.
After the war, the British government hoped to advance farming in Kenya and encouraged migration there, offering former soldiers land in Kenya on easy terms. White migration to Kenya increased as did the number and size of European-owned farms. Immigration from India had also been rising, with the Indians resenting the way in which Britain's colonial government in Kenya gave in to the demands of European settlers – by imposing restrictions on Indian activities, preventing Indians from acquiring lands in certain areas and limiting Indian representation in legislative councils.
The East Africa protectorate remained a British protectorate until summer of 1920, when it except the original coastal strip and became a Crown colony. The original coastal strip remained a protectorate.
British Crown Colony: 1920
Kenya was declared a British Colony on 23th of July 1920, after further calls by the British white settler community, so they can have more rights. Major-General Sir Edward Northey was appointed as the first Governor of the British colony of Kenya. It was made clear by the British Government that "Kenya is an African territory and the African natives must be paramount". The British therefore resisted turning Kenya into a full self-governing colony. They also limited white settlement to the highlands but still gave the lion's share of representation to the white settlers. In fact, the black Africans did not get any representation at all until 1944.
By 1920, the number of Europeans in Kenya was nearing 10,000, up from 400 at the turn of the century – against something like 2,500,000 blacks and maybe 23,000 Asians and 24,000 people of Arab origin. Many of Britain's recent migrants to Kenya failed at farming, but in general European agriculture recovered from its decline during the war years. The colonial governing council, consisting of European immigrants, stabilized the currency in Kenya. The governing council passed a law forbidding whites to work as laborers on farms, and the governing council encouraged the development of a pool of full-time black agricultural labor to fill the need for labor on the more successful of the white-owned farms. The governing council passed laws to discourage growth of a rising black labor movement, and it passed a law against blacks growing coffee, responding to white grower fear of competition and fear that black farmers would force up the price of black labor.
The 1930s were to prove to be a difficult time for the colony as the world wide depression hit commodity prices across the board. The white community was hit particularly hard as the African producers very often grew more appropriate local crops for the local markets. There was to be growing economic and political tension between these groups even after the depression finally ended and the world moved into yet another World War.
Crisis Phase
Native Kenyans disliked the intrusions and loss of control. An association of Kikuyu farmers, the Kikuyu Association, was founded in 1920, which wished to block further losses of lands and sought reforms rather than the overthrow of British rule. A more militant group formed in 1921, called the East African Association. It rejected white rule, attacked the government's labor policies, taxes, loss of lands to whites and the identification card that all native Kenyans were required to carry. The leader of the East Africa Association was Harry Thuku, a literate member of an influential Kikuyu family. The British arrested Thuku in 1922, charging him with sedition. And when crowds descended upon the jail where Thuku was being held, prison guards fired their rifles, killing about twenty. Thuku was deported to British-ruled Jubaland just north of Kenya in Somalia, and the leaderless people, influenced by missionaries, consoled themselves by forming a harmless sort of trade union.
In Kenya in the twenties, more roads were built, railroads were extended, and a few automobiles and trucks were imported. There was now a rail line to the soda deposits at Lake Magadi, another rail line that connected to rail lines that the Germans had built in Tanganyika, new rail lines to interior agricultural lands, and a rail line to the cotton growing areas in Uganda. The British inconvenienced the Masai people again by shifting them about. The Indian community continued pressing its demands for representation in the colony's legislative council. Eventually the Indians won five seats on the council, but without the right to vote. Whites continued to dominate the council, and they sought additional power, seeking to make Kenya a self-governing colony like Southern Rhodesia. Great Britain refused their request, announcing its responsibility for Kenya's blacks, Asians and Arabs.
When Britain's Labour Party returned to power in 1929, they stood for land rights for Kenya's blacks and an increase of black representation on Kenya's legislative council. These improvements were accompanied by a crisis in 1929 concerning the brutal Kikuyu custom of female circumcision. The missionaries had been attacking the custom, and the Kikuyu responded with the claim that it was an essential part of their culture. They claimed that the missionaries were undermining Kikuyu rights. The leading Kikuyu nationalist association rallied the Kikuyu to break away from the Christian churches and mission schools. In place of these, Kikuyu developed their own schools.
British East Africa Federation
Nationalist and independence movements were full of anticipation at the end of World War Two. The sudden granting of independence to India in 1947, motivated subject peoples across the empire and made them hopeful that they would receive this right in the near future also. The British government was generally content to hand over independence to viable political units although they were wary of being left holding the uneconomic colonies at the end of this process. They therefore proposed the creation of large federated political units. They created the British East Africa Federation in the 1950s combining Kenya with Tanganyika and Uganda. However before the ink had even dried on this deal, Kenya was to suffer from one of the deadliest insurgency rebellions of the Post-War period. This Mau Mau rebellion would effectively wreck the federation as regular British army forces had to be called in to quell the situation.
Mau Mau Rebellion
The Mau Mau rebellion was a result of the tension between the white settlers and the African Kikuyu tribe in particular. Most of the other African tribes stayed neutral and quiet throughout the emergency. It should be noted that the Kikuyu had historically been based around the highland areas that had been reserved for the white settlers. It is therefore not surprising that they felt more marginalised and bitter towards the white settlers than the other African tribes would. Their economic plight was to be joined with powerful religious forces to convince many Kikuyu of the rightness of their cause and that they had little to fear from British retribution.
The choosing of isolated farms and the killing of family members including women and children shocked the white settler community to its core. The insurgents also targeted those Kikuyu who worked for the British in an official capacity. The murders made dramatic headlines back in Britain and spurred the authorities to action. This rebellion occurred during the premiership of Winston Churchill who still felt a powerful connection to the concept of Empire. His administration was determined to make a stand and defend what he regarded as the lawful government of the colony.
The British brought in 20,000 extra soldiers to try and quell the situation. They made extensive use of intelligence and turn coats to infiltrate the Mau Mau groups. It was fortunate for the authorities that the rebellion was confined to the one ethnic group. This allowed the authorities to gain intelligence and support from the other groups and it also allowed them to target the Kikuyu for relocation. Mombasa and Nairobi were virtually emptied of Kikuyu as they were forcibly moved to giant reserves.
This unsubtle approach undoubtedly removed far more innocent than guilty parties, but the sheer size and efficiency of the operation saw the Mau Mau organisation fall apart as it was moved along with the population to these reserves. Over a million Kikuyu were relocated. A series of political carrots was also offered by the British to entice the more moderate Mau Mau to cease fighting. Africans were given permission to grow coffee for the first time, more land was allocated to them and their representation at the government level was to be increased.
Independence
This variety of tactics was to see the threat be effectively removed by 1957 although the emergency powers stayed in place until 1960. Despite the victory of the British forces, the sheer cost involved help convince the British government of speeding up demands for independence. In 1960, the British accepted the principle of one person - one vote. Jomo Kenyatta was elected president of the Kenyan African National Union on May of 1960 and KANU was officially recognized as a political party on June 1960. This would effectively end the privileged political position of the white settlers for good. By 1963, a black majority government was elected for the first time. It declared independence on December 12th 1963, with Kenyatta as prime minister. The United Kingdom ceded sovereignty over the Colony of Kenya and, under an agreement dated 8 October 1963, the Sultan of Zanzibar agreed that simultaneous with independence for the Colony of Kenya, the Sultan would cease to have sovereignty over the Protectorate of Kenya so that all of Kenya would be one sovereign, independent state. In this way, Kenya became an independent country under the Kenya Independence Act 1963 of the United Kingdom. Exactly 12 months later on 12 December 1964, Kenya became a republic under the name "Republic of Kenya" and Kenyatta becomes the first president of the country.
The Legacy of Colonialism
The nation state of Kenya overcame its struggle for independence from the British, but remained close to the practices they had learned. Thinking back to the beginning, when the British first came to Kenya, no one knew how much of an impact they would make on their lives and the lives of the generations to come. Now we see the significance the British had on Kenya, and their nation as a whole. They set up the basis for capitalism, taught the Africans different farming techniques, installed a racial social structure, and set up a local government. Although the British colonialism in Kenya was a cruel time in the country’s history, it ultimately taught the Kenyans how to govern their nation, it also taught them important moral lessons that effected how they would run their country.
. The small African elite was resented by most of the common Africans, because they had a say in their country more than the working class people. The white Kenyans that remained lived off of the land the British had once controlled, and set a racial barrier between themselves and the native Kenyans. This continued the British segregation after the abolition of slaves. They also intended to keep their free enterprise of land structure, proposed by the British, to help sort out land disputes between the poor and the rich Kenyans.
Kenya Today
Kenya is still troubled in a political sense, clearly demonstrated by the riotous elections of December 2007, in which around 1,000 people were killed and over 300,000 made homeless. Is it the British attempts to impose models of democracy on this traditionally tribal country that is causing this violence? Democracy is a system by which religious and ethnic differences can be exacerbated by politicians, easily playing on such factors to get ahead in the game. Politics and ethnicity remain perceptibly linked. This sounds horribly reminiscent of the 1994 crisis in Rwanda. Is democracy really the right path for Kenya?
Tribal loyalty is clearly very strong in Kenya. Voting patterns reveal that in the 2007 election, in Kikuyu areas of central Kenya, almost 97 percent of votes were for the candidate from the Kikuyu tribe, Mr Kibaki. Perhaps tribal identity is more important than forging a national identity for Kenya. This is something that countries such as Britain need to be aware of, before we assume that democracy is the best political system. European and African political systems are inherently different due to major issues such as the importance of tribal identity, and it is critical that we remember this.

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[ 1 ]. The East African Community (EAC) is an intergovernmental organization composed of five countries in the African Great Lakes region in eastern Africa: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
[ 2 ]. Hut tax was introduced not because it was a necessary public finance measure, but it was intended as a means of forcing Africans to work for the white settlers in order to earn money to pay taxes with.