Haiti and Kenya independence · CHAPTER 7 ·
White Highlands of colonial Kenya
Chapter 7 of Two Roads to Independence: Haiti 1789–1838 and Kenya 1895–1978: “The White Highlands”
Britain declared the East Africa Protectorate in 1895 for the sake of the Uganda Railway, built from 1896 to 1901 for about £5.5 million. To make the line pay, officials settled European farmers on the highlands along its route, and laws of 1902 and 1915 made African land Crown property; the Maasai lost at least half their land.
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The map above is the world of Kenya, 1920 — Kenya Colony and the White Highlands.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1920 · Europe in 1920.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
How did colonial subjects come to imagine a Kenyan nation? As in Haiti, the answer begins with the institutions that brought people under a common rule. Britain declared the East Africa Protectorate on 1 July 1895, governing the territory without formally annexing it—rather as an agent might manage an absent owner’s property. The Uganda Railway, built in 1896–1901 to secure Uganda and the headwaters of the Nile, gave the protectorate its purpose. At about £5.5 million, it cost far more than Parliament had been led to expect. Officials hoped European farmers in the cool highlands along the line would provide freight to help pay for it.
To establish those farms, the government made African land Crown property through laws of 1902 and 1915. Maasai herders were moved from the Laikipia plateau in 1911–13; Kikuyu families lost fields in Kiambu to coffee estates. The charcoal block astride the dashed railway marks the White Highlands, reserved for Europeans much as a whites-only zoning law might reserve a district today. Taxes and the kipande, a pass worn around the neck like an internal passport, pushed Africans toward work on settler farms.
These arrangements gave people reasons to organize across communities. In March 1922 a Nairobi crowd demanded the release of Harry Thuku, who opposed taxes, the pass and wage cuts. Police and settlers fired, killing 21 by the official count and many more by other estimates. The government that had established the settlement was willing to use guns to defend its order. The grievances from which nationalism would grow preceded the nation itself.
The full story
The Uganda Railway reached the interior in stages. Workers laid the first rail at Mombasa on 30 May 1896, reached the depot town of Nairobi in May 1899, and arrived at Lake Victoria at Kisumu on 20 December 1901. Britain recruited 31,983 workers in British India; 2,493 died and 6,724 stayed. Those who remained helped begin Kenya’s Asian community, shown by the arrow from the eastern edge.
The line had to be governed and paid for. In 1902 Britain transferred Uganda’s Eastern Province—the highlands from Naivasha to Kisumu—to the protectorate, putting the whole railway under one government. Commissioner Sir Charles Eliot began granting farms to Europeans. Their produce would provide traffic for the railway, but establishing the farms meant taking land Africans already used.
The law made that transfer possible. The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1902 authorized 99-year leases of “waste and unoccupied” land. In 1915 an ordinance extended leases to 999 years and classified even land occupied by Africans as Crown land. Courts soon called Africans tenants at will of the Crown: in law, the owner could remove them whenever it chose. The Maasai had been promised Laikipia in 1904 for as long as they existed as a people. In 1911–13 they were moved south along the brown arrow, losing at least half their land.
Settlers also needed people to work their farms. The hut tax introduced in 1901 and poll tax introduced in 1910 had to be paid in cash, encouraging Africans to seek wages. From 1919–20 the kipande, an internal passport recording fingerprints and employers’ verdicts, was compulsory for African men over sixteen. The loss of land made families dependent on other means of support; taxes and the pass helped direct their labor toward the settler economy.
Harry Thuku’s East African Association tried to turn shared grievances into common action. A young government telephone operator, Thuku founded it in 1921 and welcomed every community. It opposed the kipande, higher taxes and wage cuts. After his arrest on 14 March 1922, thousands gathered at the Nairobi police lines. Police and settlers killed 21 people by the official count, including Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru, who had led the women forward.
A different organization made a particular community’s claims its starting point. Founded in 1924–25, the Kikuyu Central Association concentrated on Kikuyu land and culture. Jomo Kenyatta became its secretary in 1928 and spent 1931 to 1946 lobbying in Britain. Thuku had sought support across communities; the KCA organized around a people and its land. The politics of an independent Kenya would inherit both approaches.
FULL EXPLANATION
A railway that had to be paid for
The railway’s cost created pressure for a settlement policy. Parliament had been given a much lower estimate than the final bill of about £5.5 million; with Treasury interest, it reached some £7.9 million by 1925. London wanted the protectorate to stop relying on grants, and Eliot looked to European settlers for paying freight. Lord Delamere took 100,000 acres at Njoro on a 99-year lease in 1903 and became their leader. Historians agree that settlement was chosen to rescue the railway budget, although they differ over how much freedom the state retained afterward. In Unhappy Valley (1992), Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale describe its predicament: officials had to help settlers profit while keeping order among an African majority whose taxes paid most state costs. Settlers numbered only 9,651 in 1921 and 16,812 in 1931. Estimates of their estate range from about 12,000 square miles of farmland, or 7.5 million acres, to 16,500–16,700 square miles when forest reserves are included. The measures count different land, but both reveal how much was held for a small population.
Law as the instrument of dispossession
African claimants could go to court, but the rules placed decisive obstacles in their way. In 1912 Maasai led by Parsaloi Ole Gilisho challenged their removal from Laikipia. The High Court at Mombasa dismissed the case in May 1913 and the appeal failed that December: judges held that the agreements of 1904 and 1911 were treaties, acts of state beyond the courts’ reach. Lotte Hughes estimates in Moving the Maasai (2006) that the Maasai lost at least half, and perhaps 70 percent, of their land. Kikuyu claimants faced a different ruling. In the early 1920s Chief Justice Barth read the 1915 ordinance with the 1920 annexation order to make Africans tenants at will of the Crown. H. W. O. Okoth-Ogendo later titled his study Tenants of the Crown (1991). The Kenya Land Commission of 1932–34 added small areas to reserves but confirmed the highlands; an Order in Council fixed their boundaries in February 1939. The failure of legal claims did not make the claims disappear. They would continue through the oath and, in time, the forest.
Making tribes, making Kenyans
How could politics organized around particular peoples contribute to a Kenyan nation? Colonial administration itself gave ethnic labels new weight: it assigned each tribe a reserve and chiefs and printed a tribe on every kipande. John Lonsdale distinguishes “political tribalism” from “moral ethnicity”, the arguments within a community over what made a worthy member and how land, work and seniority should be earned. Those internal debates, he argues, gave politics its passion. The Kikuyu Central Association, Ukamba Members Association, Taita Hills Association and Kavirondo Taxpayers’ Welfare Association each spoke for a people, while Thuku’s short-lived association sought to speak for all. Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya, published in 1938 with an introduction by his teacher Bronisław Malinowski, defended Kikuyu custom by connecting it to land. A common nation would be assembled from communities with histories and claims of their own.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
A railway that needed freight. Britain built the Uganda Railway to secure Uganda and the Nile. Once the line was built, its cost—about £5.5 million, far above early estimates—posed another problem: London wanted the protectorate to do without Treasury grants. Officials expected European export farmers to furnish paying freight. From 1903 Commissioner Charles Eliot advertised highland land to prospective settlers in Britain and South Africa. The effort to finance transport thus became a policy for settling the land.
Land declared empty. The land was not empty merely because its users lacked European titles. Pasture that Maasai herders left to rest in the dry season could nevertheless appear vacant to surveyors unfamiliar with their practice. The 1902 ordinance authorized the Crown to lease “waste and unoccupied” land; the 1915 ordinance made even occupied African land Crown property. In 1911–13 the Maasai were moved off Laikipia. As in Saint-Domingue a century earlier, colonial wealth rested on a legal fiction about ownership and about who could be made to work the land.
Taxes and the pass made a labour force. Land alone would not produce settler crops. Farmers needed workers, and government measures helped provide them. The hut tax of 1901 and poll tax of 1910 required cash, pushing men toward wages. The kipande, compulsory from 1919–20, recorded employers and allowed police to stop men anywhere; its records could trace someone who left a harsh employer. The state helped discipline a dispersed rural labor force, and the pass became the most hated object in colonial Kenya.
A state that listened to settlers. The people who held the highlands also had a place in making colonial law. Settlers sat on the Legislative Council from 1907, with Lord Delamere as their leader until his death in 1931; Africans had no elected voice. When settlers demanded self-government in the early 1920s, London’s Devonshire Declaration of 1923 called Kenya “an African territory” and made African interests paramount. It checked the settlers’ political ambitions. Their land, however, remained in their hands, leaving the promise made in London far from the conditions Africans faced.
THE TURNING POINT
The Nairobi police lines, 16 March 1922. Kikuyu, Kamba and others had joined Thuku’s campaign against the pass, taxes and wage cuts. His arrest brought perhaps 7,000 people to the capital to demand his release. At the Nairobi police lines, police and settlers fired on the crowd: 21 died by the official count, and many more by other estimates. The crowd scattered and Thuku was exiled to the far north until 1931. The confrontation showed that open protest could be crushed, while the dead—Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru above all—became the first martyrs of Kenyan nationalism. Shared grievances had become a public political struggle.
What it changed
Kikuyu land politics takes the lead. The Kikuyu Central Association pursued land claims through evidence and petitions. It collected accounts of lost fields for the Kenya Land Commission, sent Kenyatta to London, and, after the 1929–31 quarrel over female circumcision, backed schools independent of the missions. Kikuyu land politics became the best-organized African politics in Kenya after 1922. When the commission confirmed the White Highlands in 1934, a generation saw petitions fail to recover the land. The next chapter follows the resulting search for another course into the oath.
Squatters move onto the settler farms. Dispossession also sent Kikuyu families onto settler farms as squatters. These resident laborers worked for the farmer in exchange for a plot and grazing, much as tenants might pay rent in labor. The arrow traces their movement from the reserves into the Rift Valley; by the early 1930s they numbered more than 100,000. The arrangement depended on settlers’ need for labor. When the bargain collapsed after 1945, the Rift Valley became a cradle of Mau Mau.
A colony of separate peoples. Administration through separate reserves, chiefs and labels encouraged separate political organization among the Kamba, Taita, Luo and Luhya, and Kikuyu. The consequences reached the parties of 1960: KANU spoke for the larger communities, while KADU represented smaller communities that feared them. Thuku’s earlier attempt to unite people across those lines had raised a question that remained open at independence and long afterward: could Kenyans act as one people?
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Was land or labour the deeper grievance of colonial Kenya?
For the Maasai and Kikuyu, the loss of grazing and fields to the White Highlands makes a strong case for land as the deeper grievance. Kikuyu politics, from the Kikuyu Central Association to the oath, spoke of stolen land, and Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya made land central to Kikuyu identity. Yet the kipande, hut and poll taxes and falling wages touched African men across communities in towns and on farms; labor grievances brought Thuku’s mixed crowd to the police lines in 1922. These were connected pressures. Dispossession left families with too little land, while taxes and the pass pushed them toward wage work. Settler farming depended on both. Berman and Lonsdale describe a government trying to secure settler profits and maintain control over the people who paid most of its costs. Material loss and a visible daily humiliation reinforced one another.
An interesting fact
The capital began as a supply depot for the Uganda Railway. In 1899 workers established it beside a swampy stream called Enkare Nairobi by the Maasai, meaning “the place of cool water”. This was the last level ground before the line climbed the Rift Valley escarpment. Within six years Nairobi had replaced Mombasa as the protectorate’s capital. Among its first residents were workers recruited in British India: 6,724 of the 31,983 recruits stayed in East Africa. They and the traders who followed built much of the new town’s commerce.
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