Britain did not come to Kenya for Kenya. It came to build a railway to Uganda, and then needed something to pay for it. The answer was white settlers on the best land, Africans pushed into reserves and forced into labour, and a colony that ended in one of the most brutal wars of Britain's whole retreat from empire.
The Kenyan coast had been part of the Indian Ocean world for a thousand years: Swahili towns like Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu traded with Arabia, Persia and India, and in the 19th century the coast was claimed by the Sultan of Zanzibar. Inland lived Kikuyu, Maasai, Luo, Kamba, Nandi, Luhya and many other peoples, none of whom had ever been ruled from outside.
In the 1880s Britain and Germany divided East Africa between them, and the line they drew became the border between Kenya and Tanzania. Britain handed its share to a chartered company, the Imperial British East Africa Company, in 1888. The company had little money and little success, and in 1895 the British government took over and declared the East Africa Protectorate.
Britain's real interest lay further inland, in Uganda and the source of the Nile. To reach it, Parliament passed the Uganda Railways Act in 1896 and work began at Mombasa. The railway reached Nairobi, then a swampy depot, in 1899, Nakuru in 1900 and Port Florence (now Kisumu) on Lake Victoria in December 1901. Critics in Britain called it the "Lunatic Line" because of its cost and because few could see the point of it.
It was built mainly by indentured labourers from British India, most of them from Gujarat and the Punjab. According to figures from the UK's National Railway Museum, about 32,000 workers came from India. Of these, 2,493 died in East Africa and another 6,454 were seriously injured. Malaria, dysentery and accidents killed most; the man-eating lions of Tsavo killed some too. About 6,724 stayed when the line was finished, and with traders who followed them they founded Kenya's Asian community.
From 1897 European settlers began to arrive in the cool, fertile highlands around the railway. Lord Delamere, one of the first, became their leader. Over the following decades the best farming land, much of it Kikuyu and Maasai country, was reserved for Europeans and became known as the White Highlands. Africans were moved into "native reserves". Maasai communities were forced off their grazing lands by agreements in 1904 and 1911.
Settlers needed workers, and the government made sure they got them. Hut and poll taxes forced Africans to earn cash. The Native Registration Ordinance of 1915, enforced from 1920, made every African man carry a kipande, a registration certificate in a metal case worn round the neck, recording his employer. Without it he could be arrested.
On 23 July 1920 the inland territory was annexed as the Colony of Kenya, named after Mount Kenya. The settlers wanted Kenya to become a "white man's country" like Rhodesia. In 1923 London issued the Devonshire Declaration, saying that African interests must be "paramount". In practice the settlers kept their land.
In 1921 a young government clerk, Harry Thuku, founded the East African Association, the first political organisation in Kenya to draw members from many peoples. It campaigned against forced labour, higher taxes and above all the kipande. On 14 March 1922 the colonial police arrested him.
Thousands gathered outside the police station in Nairobi to demand his release. On 16 March a crowd of some 7,000 to 8,000 stood there. A woman named Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru is remembered for shaming the men into pressing forward. The police opened fire, and white civilians joined in. Official figures gave about 21 to 25 dead; African mortuary workers spoke of many more. Thuku was deported to the far north and held there until 1930.
After the Second World War, in which tens of thousands of Kenyans served in the King's African Rifles, frustration over land, wages and racism boiled over. A secret movement among the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru, known as Mau Mau, took oaths to fight for land and freedom. On 20 October 1952 the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, declared a state of emergency. Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kenya African Union, was arrested and convicted after a trial now widely seen as rigged.
The British response was massive. Tens of thousands were detained without trial in a "pipeline" of camps, and hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu were forced into fortified villages. Around a thousand people were hanged. Torture was widespread. On 3 March 1959, at Hola camp, guards beat eleven detainees to death for refusing to work; the first official account blamed contaminated water. The truth caused outrage in Parliament and convinced the new Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod, that the Emergency must end.
Our separate page tells how files on these abuses were hidden for decades, and how Kenyan survivors won a settlement in London in 2013: Mau Mau and the 2013 settlement in London.
The decisions that ended British rule were made in London. At the first Lancaster House Conference in early 1960, Britain accepted African majority rule. A second conference in 1962 decided the shape of the independence constitution, and a final one in autumn 1963 settled the details. Kenyatta, released in 1961, led the Kenya African National Union to victory in the May 1963 elections and became Prime Minister of a self-governing Kenya on 1 June 1963.
The Kenya Independence Act 1963 received royal assent on 3 December. It declared that on and after 12 December 1963 the British government would have no responsibility for the government of Kenya or any part of it. At midnight the Union Jack came down in Nairobi. A year later, on 12 December 1964, Kenya became a republic with Kenyatta as President.
"The basic decision about independence and about African majority rule was taken late in 1959 and at the Lancaster House Conference early in 1960."Duncan Sandys, Colonial Secretary, House of Commons, 22 November 1963
Our partner sites cover Kenya today, from its news to its national parks:
The Colonial Office files on Kenya, including the "migrated archives" released after 2011, are at The National Archives in Kew. The Kenya Independence Act 1963 and the Commons debate on it can be read online through legislation.gov.uk and Hansard.
In Nairobi, the Nairobi Railway Museum next to the station tells the story of the line, with old locomotives in the yard. The Nairobi National Museum covers the country's history. The Mau Mau memorial statue of Dedan Kimathi stands in the city centre, and a memorial to victims of colonial torture, paid for under the 2013 settlement, is in Uhuru Park. On the coast, Fort Jesus in Mombasa is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tsavo, where the railway workers were killed by lions, is a national park.
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
In London:
The hidden files and the case Kenyan survivors won.
The protectorate the railway was built to reach.
German East Africa, Zanzibar and the union of 1964.
African soldiers in Britain's wars.
All of Britain's African territories, country by country.
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