History of Kenya
Mrs.
Nardi's 9th Grade World History Class
Lenox Memorial High School, Lenox, Massachusetts
History of Colonialism
The concept of "race" has allowed some groups or nations of the world to subjugate and denegrate other groups. It has lead to cruelty, poverty and war in some cases and in others an ongoing denial of the rights of some peoples by others. The term, itself, is a man-made concept and should be removed or redefined as part of the lexicon of human language.
In order to have an up-to-date definition of racism, please click the link below and view the video by the American Anthropological Association.
After the Berlin Conference in 1885, African peoples were subject to the division of their homelands and the continued oppression of racism stemming from, among other concepts, Social Darwinism.
Click on the reference pages below for more details
It is well to note the agreements cited by the Convention on Human Rights expressly list the kinds of treatment a human being should receive at the hands of other human beings.
Colonial Kenya
The Kikuyu prophet, Cege wa Kibiru, had a disturbing vision. He saw people who “looked like small white frogs” with clothing like butterfly wings, coming with “sticks that spit fire”. He would, also, see an “iron snake” that would connect the “big waters to the east and west” (Muriuki 137). Cege told the young warriors that it would be useless to try to stop these invaders, however, the young men could not resist their groupl mandate to protect their property or women. They fought back.
Arrival of the Europeans
The caravans, with as many as 1500 Swahili, Arab or even European traders, flowed into the southern part of Kenya. With the lust for the riches of ivory and the need for adventure;“businessmen and empire-builders” came bearing the Maxim gun and their western cultural prejudices. See the link below.
By 1889, the Imperial British East Africa Company would be granted a royal charter and Fort Machakos would be built in what is now the Central Province. By 1890, Fort Dagoretti would be established and Frederick Lugard began building a relationship with southern Kikuyu by becoming a “blood-brother” and signing a “peace treaty” but he was one of only a few men with such diplomatic talent among the early colonizers (143).
The British Protectorate
By 1895, the IBEAC would be replaced by the British East Africa Protectorate and Pax Britannica would follow. With the invasion of western imperial interests, Kenya (and specifically Kikuyuland) would be the host of a poorly designed pre-modern colony, which began with a rapacious land grab.
The Lunatic Express
In 1901, the Uganda Railroad was begun. It was designed to take British troops from Mombasa on the coast of Kenya to Uganda. Workers began laying tracks that would cover 582 miles into the interior of East Africa. As Carolyn Elkins suggests in her work on Kenya, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, the major rationale for the railroad was rife with illogic and “paranoia” (Elkins 2). The troops were necessary to protect the “headwaters of the Nile” from sabotage by other European imperialist forces such as Germany. The British feared the blocking of the Nile would virtually end the empire by forcing their withdrawal from the Suez Canal. Even more extreme was the cost of the railway--- 6.5 million pounds sterling and 10,000 Indian “coolie” lives. To the credit of the British public and press, it was labeled the “Lunatic Express” in Great Britain.
As the first High Commissioner of the East African Protectorate, Sir George Eliot can be credited with the idea of land alienation which is a euphemism for taking land that belongs to others. Eliot, a young British aristocrat, with all the requisite British imperialist noblesse oblige, immediately addressed the problem of the huge debt generated by the Uganda Railroad by suggesting that if “white settlers” were brought into the seemingly empty land they would …make the railway pay” (Muriuki 170).
The Means to a Capitalist End
Eliot admits, quite revealingly, his understanding of the moral significance of his action saying, “No doubt on platforms and in reports, we declare we have no intention of depriving natives of their land but this has never prevented us from taking whatever we wanted…”(Anderson 139). So far as the British were concerned, the ends justified the means.
In the evaluation of the development of colonial settler societies in Africa during the early 20th Century, Kenneth Good provides a succinct analysis, “settler societies show a capacity for independent capitalist development, built upon heavy exploitation of African land and labor” (Good 597). He continues by noting that the “colon” state (in this case the British East African Protectorate) supplies the military muscle required to force the native people into this subservient position. Consequently, the bloodthirsty expediency used to subdue the Kikuyu would remain a vivid memory for the their ethnic group.
Predatory Lineage v. Capitalism
The Kikuyu based their social order on land expansion. As Jomo Kenyatta has pointed out in Facing Mount Kenya, to succeed as a Kikuyu male, one must have children. In order to bear many children, a man must have several wives and land for cattle and cultivation. As each generation is born so the mbari (clan) must expand until it grows too unwieldy. Then, young Kikuyu men will search for a new area to clear and cultivate. His success in this adventure will give him seniority and power according to the number of wives he has acquired and the number of children produced. [In fact, even though scholars often describe the Kikuyu as an egalitarian society, if one takes a closer look at the economic stresses on land expansion, the institutions of bride-wealth and the joisting for political power before the arrival of the British, there was considerable competition for land. Of course, the more powerful families would prevail. In anthropologist Marshall Sahlin’s view this is called a “predatory lineage system” (qted in Bates 17).] One might say that the Kikuyu had a predispostion to capitalism before the arrival of the British. They understood the value of individual effort and ostracised the group members who were neglectful of their own need to attend to their survival.
British Indirect Rule
After the arrival
of the British, indirect rule allowed British government officials to
choose a “chief” to head various districts where the Kikuyu
lived. As a measure to keep the cost of colonial administration low, early
administrators needed a way to manage the large population of Kikuyu and
as well as other ethnic groups. As a short-fall measure, when early on
there were not nearly enough British to officiate over the many villages
around Mt. Kenya, the local officials chose the most convenient and familiar
people, the local opportunists. These collaborators had worked for the
government as porters, guides, soldiers or informants. The British saw
fit to use them to create their stereotypical idea of a “tribal
chief”, assuming, of course, that Kikuyu and other groups had had
such an institution. As Muriuki notes, the Kikuyu were an “acephalous”
society and highly decentralized over the many ridges near Mt. Kenya (Muriuki
3). In reality, the Kikuyu had elders and powerful, wealthy men who participated
in elder councils and who wielded considerable influence within the group.
However, as historian John Walton explains, “…the authority
of the local chiefs was not ‘recognized over a sufficiently wide
area to make them competent to administer the country…”
(Walton). British misconceptions would put into place policies that would
undermine their own legitimacy.
Once more, the British, through ignorance or expediency, created further
conflict for the native population. In Muriuki’s description, he
leaves no doubt as to efficacy of indirect rule or the Kikuyu’s
disgust with it saying:
The so-called
chiefs soon became local ‘tin gods’ and a law unto themselves….because
very little control
was exercised over them. (Muriuki 167)
Often using physical abuse to enforce their will, the "tribal chief" used unregulated power and fear which built resentment and bitterness within the group. Indirect rule would continue for decades. Early on numbers of Kikuyu elders (early politicians) spoke up about the harassment and injustice administered by these unscrupulous headmen to little effect.
Missionaries
in Kenya
With the encouragement of the
colonial office, missionary societies, such as the East African
Scottish Mission, established bases in Kenya, the first being
near Fort Dagoretti. These missionaries made rapid inroads
with desperate Kikuyu who were weakened by disease and famine in 1898.
Muriuki notes that missionaries, “organiz[ed] famine relief
and car[ed] for the sick”(178), and these efforts made them
very welcome by the Kikuyu. As time passed, missions spread further north
to Thogoto where Reverend Thomas Watson established 3,000 acres for missionary
work and drew “hundreds of the sick and hungry” Kikuyu into
his flock (178). Following Watson came McGregor who established the Church
Missionary Society at first Kihuruko, then, Murang’a
(Fort Hall), and on into Nyeri district by 1909 (179). By the 1920s the
Kikuyu reserves had a plethora of missionary stations ranging from Presbyterian,
Anglican, and Methodists to Roman Catholic (Elkins 20). As Carol Elkins
states in Imperial Reckoning, established missions dominated
the “Christian scene” where they,
…condemn[ed]
the heathenism of the Kikuyu religious and cultural practices
and preach[ed] the values of Christianity, commerce and civilization.
For the
colonial government, missionaries offered civilization on the cheap…Of
course
Africans would have to pay school fees and health-care costs…[as
well as]… renounce their own religion and convert to Christianity.
(Elkins 20)
However, missionary
demands continued to grow beyond just conversion and school fees.
In fact, missionaries were central to the British“civilizing mission”
because they taught the language of submission and denigration of Kikuyu
traditions. Along with this economic strife, the missionary movement would
exacerbate the widening divisions in Kikuyuland through a rapid assault
on the Kikuyu language, values, and rituals through missionary or 'bush
schools'.
Furthermore, the missionary dictionaries change basic Kikuyu concepts by reinventing their meaning with adjustment in words and usage. For example, as Peterson notes, simple words like “muthamaki” which in Kikuyu language means “one who can speak (Lonsdale xiv); virtue and power were reinvented to connote the European concepts of hierarchy and position with the words, …’monarch’, ‘ prince’, and ‘ruler’…"(Peterson 261). This eliminates the Kikuyu concept of reciprocity which instilled a sense of fairness in Kikuyu society. Kikuyu elders (or athuuir) held leadership positions within the mbari for the good of all its members including the ahoi (“tenants in friendship” Lonsdale xiii); they were not kings nor even chiefs so they did not dominate the society as would a monarch.
Circumcision Crisis of 1920
This split would widen with the circumcision crisis of 1920 when Kikuyu missionary adherents rejected the mandate of the European missionaries to end female circumcision and Kikuyu would establish their own “bush schools” that would preserve Kikuyu traditional beliefs.
Both Kikuyu men and women would think that, as Lonsdale says, “Circumcision and clitoridectomy were like forest clearance, they cut childish nature into adult culture (341).” Above all, the circumcision ritual was the primary element of and integral to Kikuyu culture and in attacking this practice, the missionaries awoke a sleeping dragon in Kikuyu consciousness. In Ngugi wa Thiongo’s fictional work, The River Between, he chronicles the effects of the controversy over circumcision on Kikuyu culture with a story similar to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. The parable is set between two ridges separated by the Honia River. The river becomes a symbol for the deep religious division between the new Christian and the older traditional Kikuyu beliefs. In the story, Ngugi weaves the tragedy of young lovers who try to bridge this divide and end up the victims of this heart-wrenching tragedy.
Legal Manuverings
The white settlers had the notion to create a “white man’s country” where the majority of its residents would be black. These immigrants had answered the call of the British Government coming from various parts of Europe, and, South Africa. The South Africans may have felt more like refugees because they were “less affluent” (Elkins 10) than the aristocrats from the British Isles such as Lord Delamere. However, their racism had a more virulent energy to it. The concept of British “trusteeship” paled in comparison to the utter subjugation and outright hatred of the black race in southern Africa.
After World War I, white settles would intensify their clamor for greater and greater control over their reluctant labor force. Under pressure from the White Highlands, the Legislative Council passed a new law restricting squatter freedom. In 1918, the first Resident Native Labourer’s Ordinance was introduced. It required native Kenyans to carry identification or a pass known as the kipande . This kipande system was modeled on the Home Lands system of apartheid in South Africa where black’s movements and labor were regulated by the authorities. Black movement was restricted and they were made to live in confined areas called the Home Lands.[The pass, hung around the neck, gave authorities the name, employment history, and other pertinent personal details of the person’s life (Elkins 16).] The system was designed to restrict the African’s ability to exploit any advantages he or she might find thereby forcing them to accept low wage employment. To historian Tabitha Kanogo, this policy forced wages down while “turn[ing] the labourer into a virtual prisoner” (Kanogo 38).