The wealth of Africa
Kenya
Teachers’ notes
Supported by
The CarAf Centre
www.britishmuseum.org
The wealth of Africa
Kenya
THE WEALTH OF AFRICA: USING THESE RESOURCES
This educational resource consists of 16 sets of resources on African civilisations, countries
and themes.
Each set of resources includes:
• Teachers’ notes
• Students’ worksheets
• A presentation
Download the resources free at www.britishmuseum.org/schools
Teachers’ notes
These are intended to provide background material for teachers, but can also be referred
to by students who want more contextual information.
Students’ worksheets
These are stand-alone worksheets which can be downloaded as classroom resources or
viewed on the interactive whiteboard. They are self-contained, with tasks and questions and
a limited number of sources in which the language has been slightly amended to make them
more accessible to the likely reading ages of the students. They are also designed to be used
independently of the teacher, e.g. for homework.
If teachers do not wish to spend more than one or two lessons on Kenya, then the sheets will
prove ideal for small project work, with groups of students taking one sheet, finding interesting
and relevant information, and reporting back to the rest of the class. A specimen lesson plan
along these lines is given below.
Presentation
This provides a simpler and more visual introduction to the topic. It contains some of the
images and sources found in the other sections, and can be shown on the whiteboard or used
at home to give an overview of the main topics covered.
Your feedback
Please help the British Museum improve its educational resources for schools and teachers
by giving your feedback. The first 250 teachers or tutors to complete the online survey before
12.00 on 1 September 2011 will receive a printed set of illustrations of African civilisations
by artist Tayo Fatunla. Visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/wealthofafrica to complete the survey
and for terms and conditions.
Front cover image: Wooden carving of a soldier, Kenya, about 1960s.
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The wealth of Africa
Kenya
LESSON SCHEME: KENYA IN AN HOUR
Aim
To decide whether British rule was good for Kenyans, or not.
Starter: Impressions of Kenya
Scroll quickly through the images in the presentation, and get feedback from students on their
first impressions, especially on what they consider the relationship between British and Kenyans
to have been like. (10 minutes)
Research
Divide the class into groups with one group per resource sheet. Each group has to look at the
question at the top of the sheet, and decide on the answer by studying the sources. The group
should note 5–10 relevant facts that it can feed back to the rest of the class as evidence of its
answer. (20 minutes)
Feedback
Each group feeds back its findings, opinion and evidence to the rest of the class, who could take
notes. (15 minutes)
Discussion
The central question of the effects of colonial rule can be debated; whether there were any
benefits to being colonised; who did well out of it, etc. (15 minutes)
Homework
e.g. The British Colonial Secretary defends British rule in Kenya.
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The wealth of Africa
Kenya
COLONIAL RULE IN KENYA c. 1890–1963: TEACHERS’ NOTES
Introduction
In the public imagination, Kenya has enjoyed an almost golden image among Britain’s former
African colonies. It appears, more often than not, as the land of big game safaris, beaches,
spectacular landscapes, and, until recently, apparent political stability.
Yet this superficial pleasant picture shows the limitations of public memory. The story also
includes land-grabbing and betrayal, greed on the part of white colonists, and mass arrests,
ill-treatment, and repression ending in the grudging relaxation of colonial ties. It also
leaves out the long history of Kenya’s pre-colonial civilisations. Kenya was one of the least
economically promising of British colonies, one of the most restless and problematic for the
government, and one whose end marked one of the bloodiest episodes in British colonial
history in Africa.
Why study Kenya?
The study of Kenya provides a counterpoint to Nigeria, and can be seen as a contrast in
colonial experiences. Britain’s policy in Nigeria was to rule as far as possible through African
chiefs. It tried to do the same in Kenya, irrespective of the fact that Kenyan society and the
role of chiefs was very different. Power ended up in the hands of white settlers who proved
to be just as much of a limitation on British ambitions as Africans.
For students studying History for the English National Curriculum, Kenya is a useful case study
of the problems of colonialism and the struggles for independence. These resources examine
not only the difficult relationship between the imperial power and the occupied country, but
also the extra dimension of the white settlers, who had their own agenda to follow. As in
South Africa, a further point of interest was a large influx of settlers from Asia, who were
treated differently from the whites or the Africans. The relationship between these different
groups reveals some of the inevitable difficulties of the colonial experience.
In terms of the wealth of Africa, Kenya was a colony with very limited mineral resources. Its
main value was in its land which proved an area for exploitation, though often for the benefit
of the white migrants rather than for the mother country. The economy had to be built from
a low threshold, and the relative prosperity of the country today can be said to owe much
to the development of infrastructure during the period of colonial rule. This creates another
side to the discussion on the merits and drawbacks of colonialism.
Geography
The coast is tropical and humid, becoming gradually more temperate further inland. Low
plains lead towards the central highlands and then on to the Great Rift Valley. This area is
rich in agriculture. To the north east there is semi-desert, and to the south west much of the
country is devoted to game reserves. There are very few mineral resources, and agriculture
is the main industry.
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The wealth of Africa
Kenya
History
The Swahili coast had been an important and profitable trading area since antiquity, and had
adopted a strong influence from the Persian Gulf and the spread of Islam, particularly in port
cities like Mombasa and Malindi. Swahili control did not extend far inland, however, and here
societies such as the Luo, Nandi, Pokot, Kikuyu and Masai, who had entered the area between
about 1100 and 1500, were dominant. Generally, these groups coexisted peacefully, but natural
growth in populations led to greater demands for land, which resulted in movement and
occasional strife. Particular tensions arose between settled farming communities, such as the
Kikuyu, and nomadic pastoralists like the Masai.
From the 1500s until the 1700s, Portugal had dominated trade in the coastal region, when
it was replaced by the Omanis based in Zanzibar. In 1885, Germany had gained a concession
from the Sultan of Zanzibar, who controlled the Kenyan coast, but in 1890 it agreed to hand
over this area to Britain. Britain created the East Africa Protectorate, and in 1920 the Colony
of Kenya. Independence was granted in 1963.
Colonial rule
At first, Britain tried to follow the same policy that seemed to be working well in Nigeria; that
of indirect rule. This meant finding African chiefs and allowing them to control their people in
exchange for the collection of taxes and provision of labour. However, societies in Kenya did not
operate along these hierarchical lines, and such a system proved unworkable. Britain then tried
to set up its own system of chiefs, but these lacked the respect of their communities, and some
became corrupt and dictatorial. This was especially a problem among the Kikuyu.
The British government was formally in charge, and ruled through a governor. The government
was by no means unified in its approach to the colony, with the Liberals often adopting
an anti-colonial attitude. Within Kenya there were four major groups of people, tensions
between whom made management of the Protectorate problematic – the British government
employees, European settlers, Asian immigrants, and Africans.
Far more than in other colonies, problems on the ground were sometimes caused by the
white settlers, many of whom were from South Africa and had experience of treating Africans
as inferiors. Far from working in harmony with this group, the government spent much of its
energy protecting the Africans against it. The government, at least ostensibly, believed in its
‘protecting’ role, and had to moderate the greed and rapacity of settlers who demanded huge
areas of land and Africans to be coerced as forced labour to work it. Lord Delamere, the leader
of the settlers, was renowned for his harsh treatment of local people, but his successor,
Captain Grogan, was even worse. He once publicly beat his African servant simply to show
that he could. He was imprisoned for the offence, which caused considerable annoyance
among his compatriots.
Another conflicting group was the Asian community from British India, who came in their
thousands to Kenya, not just to build the railway but to work as storekeepers, traders, and
even in the civil service. Many of these became successful and wealthy, and resented their
lack of political power.
Then there was the majority, the indigenous Africans who were prevented from becoming a
real force by the lack of unity between their different societies, each one of which was easily
picked off by the government. Even anti-colonial political activity, when it emerged in the
1920s, tended to be run along societal lines, with the Kikuyu the most prominent.
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The wealth of Africa
Kenya
Political activity
From 1907 the white settlers were allowed to elect members to the legislative council. The
Indians demanded similar rights and in 1920 they turned down the offer of two seats arguing
that this was not representative of the size of their community. In 1927, the Indians won the
right to five seats on the council, compared to eleven reserved for Kenyans of European origin.
The Africans also asserted their claims. As early as 1921 the Young Kikuyu Association was
established to assert African rights and, more specifically, to recover appropriated Kikuyu land.
This became the Kenya African Union (KAU), whose leader after 1947 was Jomo Kenyatta.
In 1957, Africans were permitted seats on the legislative council.
Mau Mau
Between 1952 and 1959, there was an uprising by Kikuyu militants against British rule, mainly
over the question of land. The exact aims, organisation, leadership and membership of Mau Mau
are still contested today, but it was widely assumed to have been inspired by Kenyatta and the
KAU (though he never admitted to it). It began with murderous attacks on white settlers, but
then became aimed against fellow Africans who were seen as collaborators. Independence was
not a stated aim, and British authorities tried to portray the movement as anti-progressive,
rather than nationalist.
Although only a few dozen Europeans were killed, compared with thousands of Africans, the
campaign struck terror into the white community for the secretive and bloodthirsty oaths that
fighters had to take, and because the identities of Mau Mau could not be established. In one
of the earliest and worst cases a six-year-old boy was hacked to death by the servant who had
looked after him.
Such atrocities were easily matched by the British reaction. A State of Emergency was
declared and troops were sent to restore order. Africans were routinely rounded up and placed
in concentration camps where many were worked or beaten to death. Whole communities
were forcibly moved, and their villages burnt, to deny support to the fighters. Kenyatta was
imprisoned and several Mau Mau leaders were hanged before the movement fizzled out by
about 1960.
This brutal end to the Kenya Colony, and the discrimination and removal of land that Africans
had had to endure over the previous half century, make the ensuing peace and lack of retaliation
against the white settlers after independence all the more remarkable.
Economy
When the British took over, Kenya was a subsistence economy with much of the central area
being taken up by pastoralist (cattle) farmers. Realising that there was little in place to exploit,
the British government decided it had to kick-start the economy. Two policies began this
process – the construction of a railway through Kenya into Uganda and the deliberate settling
of white farmers in the most fertile and agreeable area, the Central Highlands.
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The wealth of Africa
Kenya
The settlement of the Central Highlands
Once it was noted that agriculture would provide the main resource for Kenya, moves were
made to encourage settlement of the most desirable (to Europeans) areas – the temperate
and high-altitude Central Highlands. The settlers had difficulty in finding crops that grew well
in the Highlands, because of disease as well as their lack of local environmental knowledge.
Long leases for huge areas were granted, but from 1902 it was made clear that these should
only be for whites. This policy was legally enshrined in 1939, which caused considerable
resentment from the Indian population, not to mention the Africans whose land it once had
been. Not until independence in 1963 were Africans allowed to farm the Highlands.
The Kenya-Uganda railway
Even by the standards of Victorian construction projects, this was a remarkable and much-admired
achievement. Begun in 1896 in Mombasa, the railway reached the shores of Lake Victoria in
1901, and then pushed on to Uganda. At that time, the main focus of the project was to link the
more economically promising Ugandan Protectorate to the coast, but Kenya was to become a
major beneficiary. Dubbed the ‘Lunatic Express’, the line was built at the cost of thousands of
lives, either through disease, in battles with the Masai through whose lands the track was laid,
and a far from negligible number through attacks by man-eating lions who were reputed to
have dragged workers from carriages at night. Most of the workers were brought in from India,
and these formed the basis of the sizeable Asian population in East Africa. Whatever the cost,
the railway was a huge success, and one of the offshoots was the development of Nairobi from
a temporary railway camp into one of the most populous, and thriving cities on the continent.
Treatment of Africans
Many African people were made to move to make way for infrastructure projects or to create
agricultural land for settlers. For example, the Nandi were beaten militarily and confined
to a reserve to stop them harassing the building of the railway. The pastoralist Masai were
renowned for their warlike capabilities and a different policy was used against them. In a 1904
treaty they were ‘permitted’ to occupy two reservations ‘so long as the Masai as a race should
exist’ (Kenya Land Commission, Appendix VIII: 573). This lasted nine years, before the Masai
were evicted from the northern reserve into an enlarged but less fertile southern one. The
Kikuyu, who were mainly farmers, were permitted squatters rights on land that had belonged
to them for generations.
As with other colonies, shortage of labour was an impediment to the economic success of
the colony. Africans had no desire, nor any particular need, to work for their colonial masters.
Persuading the Nandi and Masai to work on the railway was not an option, and so the
government brought thousands of labourers from India. When it came to agriculture, however,
the situation was more complicated. Now it was not the government but the settlers who
needed African labour. The government helped to an extent by imposing taxes that had to be
paid in coin, which could be earned by working for the whites. However, not content with this,
settlers demanded the right to impose forced labour. The British government had not shown
many scruples in adopting this measure in Nigeria when it had its own projects to complete,
but it was now overcome with moral misgivings and proved reluctant and slow to accede to
these demands. A solution was the squatting principle, by which Africans, including the Kikuyu,
were allowed to subsist on white farms in return for providing labour when demanded.
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The wealth of Africa
Kenya
REFERENCES
British Medical Journal, ‘East Africa Protectorate’, British Medical Journal, 1907 July 27; 2 (2430), 234
City of Nairobi, ‘About Nairobi’, online at
http://www.nairobicity.org/articles/default.asp?search=about, accessed 13 May 2010
Edgerton, R, 1990, Mau Mau: an African crucible (I B Tauris & Co)
Eliot, C, 1905, The East Africa Protectorate (Arnold)
Elkins, C, 2005, Britain’s Gulag: the brutal end of Empire in Kenya (Jonathan Cape)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911, ‘British East Africa, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, available
at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/British_East_Africa,
accessed 16 June 2010
Green, M, 1990, ‘Mau Mau Oathing Rituals and Political Ideology in Kenya: A Re-Analysis’,
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute Vol. 60, No. 1, 69–87
Harlow, V (ed.), 1965, History of East Africa Vol. 2 (Clarendon)
Hollis, C, 1943, ‘The Masai’, Journal of the Royal African Society Vol. 42, No. 168, 119
Huxley, E, 1944, Race and Politics in Kenya (Faber & Faber)
Kenya Land Commission, 1934, Evidence and memoranda 3 vols., (Colonial Office)
Lonsdale, J, 1990, ‘Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya’,
The Journal of African History Vol. 31, No. 3, 393–421
Morgan, W, 1963, ‘The “White Highlands” of Kenya’, The Geographical Journal Vol. 129,
No. 2, 140–155
Padmore, G, 1953, ‘Behind the Mau Mau’, Phylon (1940–1956) Vol. 14, No. 4, 355–372
Pickens, G, 2004, African Christian God-talk: Matthew Ajuoga’s Johera narrative
(University Press of America)
Sabar-Friedman, G, 1995, ‘The Mau Mau Myth: Kenyan Political Discourse in Search
of Democracy’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines Vol. 35, Cahier 137, 101–131
Shillington, K (ed.), 2005, Encyclopedia of African History (Taylor & Francis)
Stichter, S, 1975, ‘Workers, Trade Unions, and the Mau Mau Rebellion’, Canadian Journal of African
Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines Vol. 9, No. 2, 259–275
Tamarkin, M, 1976, ‘Mau Mau in Nakuru’, The Journal of African History Vol. 17, No. 1, 119–134
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Your feedback
Please help the British Museum improve its educational resources for schools and teachers
by giving your feedback. The first 250 teachers or tutors to complete the online survey
before 12.00 on 1 September 2011 will receive a printed set of illustrations of African
civilisations by artist Tayo Fatunla. Visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/wealthofafrica
to complete the survey and for terms and conditions.
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