The wealth of AfricaKenya

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How well did British rule in Kenya work?

Front cover image: Wooden carving of a soldier, Kenya, about 1960s, British Museum.

KIKUYU WARRIORS IN KENYA

Source 1In addition to shields used in battle, the Kikuyu also made shields for dancing, called ndome. They are carved out of a single piece of wood with a hole for the arm instead of a hand grip, and were worn on the upper left arm by boys prior to their initiation as junior warriors. Each year the boys of a particular territorial unit would choose a design which they later used for their war shields once they had achieved warrior status.

British Museum

Why are these young men dressed like this?

Source 3: Wooden shield (ndome)British Museum

Source 2: Kikuyu warriors, c. 1920sBritish Museum

KIKUYU WARRIORS IN KENYA

Source 1In addition to shields used in battle, the Kikuyu also made shields for dancing, called ndome. They are carved out of a single piece of wood with a hole for the arm instead of a hand grip, and were worn on the upper left arm by boys prior to their initiation as junior warriors. Each year the boys of a particular territorial unit would choose a design which they later used for their war shields once they had achieved warrior status.

British Museum

Why are these young men dressed like this?

What might British colonists have thought of these young men?

Source 3: Wooden shield (ndome)British Museum

Source 2: Kikuyu warriors, c. 1920sBritish Museum

WHERE IS KENYA?

20th

19th

Century AD

1920 – Kenya declared a colony

1904 – Treaty with Masai

1895 – Britain forms East African Protectorate

1901 – Mombasa to Lake Victoria railway completed

1944 – Kenyan African Union (KAU) formed

1952–1959 – Mau Mau uprising

1963 – Kenya becomes independent

Eastern Africa was a region of varied environments which had been home to many different peoples for thousands of years. In the 1800s, explorers and missionaries began to take an interest in the area. Then, in 1895, Britain set up the East African Protectorate in what is now known as Kenya. From the start the authorities faced problems.

Unsurprisingly, Africans resented being taken over by a foreign power. There were particular issues with societies like the Masai, who were nomadic – a way of life that the British found unhelpful – and the Kikuyu, who owned the most desirable farming land. The structure of these societies, in which chiefs were not really in charge, made control difficult.

What the British hadn’t expected was the challenges that came from the white farmers who they had encouraged to migrate to Kenya to kick start the economy.

Which problem might have been the most difficult for the British?

PROBLEM 1: THE WHITE SETTLERS

Source 4The lack of farm workers was an early cause of trouble to the settlers, while the labour regulations led, during 1907–1908, to considerable friction between the colonists and the government.

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911

Source 5By 1912 the settlers were demanding a reduction of the native land reserves because more Africans would then be obliged to earn their living by paid labour. Against this demand, however, the Government stood firm.

Historian’s account, in Harlow 1965: 230

What was the main problem for the settlers?

Source 6: Tea Plantation, Kenya Highlands© Vanessa Meadu

PROBLEM 1: THE WHITE SETTLERS

Source 4The lack of farm workers was an early cause of trouble to the settlers, while the labour regulations led, during 1907–1908, to considerable friction between the colonists and the government.

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911

Source 5By 1912 the settlers were demanding a reduction of the native land reserves because more Africans would then be obliged to earn their living by paid labour. Against this demand, however, the Government stood firm.

Historian’s account, in Harlow 1965: 230

What was the main problem for the settlers?

Source 7These settlers have consistently controlled the policy of the local government and that government has just as consistently treated the native population with injustice, bigotry, and unrestrained racial greed.

Elspeth Huxley, writer who grew up in colonial Kenya 1944: 16

How might this become a problem for the Government?

Source 6: Tea Plantation, Kenya Highlands© Vanessa Meadu

PROBLEM 2: THE MASAI

Source 8The one people who might seriously have frustrated British ambitions in the interior were the Masai. No-one, however, realised this better than the British, who were generally most careful to avoid any conflict with them.

Harlow 1965: 12

Source 9There can be no doubt that the Masai and many other tribes must go under. It is a prospect which I view with a clear conscience... [Masaidom] is a beastly, bloody system founded on raiding and immorality.

Commissioner Eliot writes to the Foreign Secretary, quoted in Harlow 1965: 270–271

Source 10By the Masai Agreement of 1904, the Masai agreed to move into two reserves... for ‘so long as the Masai as a race should exist’... As early as 1908 the idea began for the removal of the northern Masai to a single extended southern reserve south of the railway. This operation was eventually accomplished by 1913.

Harlow 1965: 36

Source 11Of the 12,000 square miles of European settled land, 7000 consisted of old Masai grazing grounds, evacuated under agreements between 1904 and 1913.

Morgan 1963: 146

How did the British solve the ‘Masai problem’?

Source 12: Masai warriorBritish Museum

PROBLEM 3: THE ECONOMY

Source 13It was believed that a railway would help improve British trade in the interior as well as to provide the means for maintaining British control over the source of the Nile. Politicians in Britain also justified the construction of the railway by arguing that it would help to wipe out the slave trade in the region.

Shillington 2005: 745

Source 14The railway’s objective was Uganda. But its construction also made possible the economic development of Kenya. The costs of porter transport were such that so far no item except ivory had been or could have been exported from any part of Kenya other than the narrow coastal belt.

Harlow 1965: 210

Source 15Between 1910 and 1914 revenue increased from £503,000 to £1,123,000 and expenditure from £669,000 to £1,115,000. In 1912 the protectorate became self-supporting. Railway receipts, licences, taxes and customs are the chief sources of revenue.

Encyclopedia Britannica 1911

How important was the railway to the colony?

Source 16: Tsavo station, Kenya-Uganda railway© Ralph Pina

PROBLEM 4: RUNNING THE COLONY

What problems did the British face?

Source 17From the beginning the British administration was hindered by the inferior quality of many of the earliest British colonial administrators... Most had little education, and at least one was on record as being illiterate.

Pickens 2004: 59

Source 18Kitvi District was about two-thirds the size of England, and in the early years there were rarely more than three British officials stationed there.

Harlow 1965: 39

Source 19In the East African Protectorate there was virtually no existing political authorities... So, the major task was to try and create a political order which might be looked at by Africans as having legitimate authority over them.

Harlow 1965: 41–42

What does Source 20 tell you about how the British ruled Kenya?

Source 20: Wooden figure of a policeman riding a bicycle

British Museum

PROBLEM 5: THE KIKUYU AND MAU MAU

Between 1952 and 1959 there was a major rebellion against British rule. The rebels (Mau Mau) came mainly from the Kikuyu.

Source 21The Kikuyus alone lost over 500,000 acres, for which they received not a penny of compensation.

Padmore 1953: 358

Source 22An even more serious rift took place in 1929 when [missionaries] attempted to prohibit the traditional Kikuyu practice of circumcising girls prior to marriage... The Kikuyu, like many other African societies, made female circumcision a requirement for marriage and for full participation in the traditional world of women.

Edgerton 1990: 40

Source 23Most of Mau Mau’s leaders had come from among the squatter population. Much of their bitterness and hatred towards the Europeans and their readiness to resort to violence must have stemmed from their past experience as squatters.

Tamarkin 1976: 129

Why should the Kikuyu want to rebel against the British?

Does the rebellion suggest that the British were not successful in ruling Kenya? Source 24: Kikuyu warriors

British Museum

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