Kenya

A

Bantu and Maasai Migrations

Bantu invasions after the 14th century forced most of the Nilotes into what is today Uganda, or Tanzania. The Luo remained, and became absorbed into Bantu culture. The Bantu invaded Kenya by two routes. The Kamba and Kikuyu took the northerly way from west of the great lakes area and settled in the highlands. A more southerly route was followed by the Taita and other coastal Bantu. Both these groups were organized into clans, with no centralized social or political institutions. Even the Kikuyu, the most numerous of the Bantu groups, remained a clan-based society. No large, powerful Bantu kingdoms ever emerged in Kenya.

The soil in the uplands was fertile, and agriculture flourished there. The Bantu, using the terrain of the Rift Valley, the valleys and hills of the highlands, and the Aberdare Mountains, defended themselves from later invaders and were able to retain their political systems.

In the 17th century another group of invaders came to Kenya from the region north of Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf). These were the Nilo-Hamitic Maasai with their cattle herds. Scorning the uplands for the plains of central and southern Kenya, they clashed with the Bantu only where these regions met. Their society was also based on clans, and although the warrior, or muran, was a dominant figure, the Maasai never had large armies. Like the Bantu, they presented few military problems to the Europeans who divided up East Africa in the 19th century.

B

The Zenj States and the Portuguese

After the 11th century, the coastal areas were dominated by traders and settlers from southern Arabia. They established the various Zenj city-states, so called because in Arabic the country was known as the land of the Zenj, or “black people”. The most important of these settlements in Kenya were Malindi and Mombasa. The Muslim entrepreneurs were content to control the interior trade, and their cities became important ports in the Indian Ocean trade system. In time a composite Arabic-Bantu culture developed along the coast, exemplified by the hybrid Swahili language, which became the trading language of East Africa.

Generally independent of one another, the Zenj states were from time to time dominated by powerful non-African maritime empires. One of these was the sultanate of Oman and Muscat, which for centuries vied with the Europeans for supremacy along the coast. The Portuguese, following Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, attempted to monopolize all Indian Ocean trade, and for more than a century, despite resistance, they dominated the Zenj states. Fort Jesus, a massive 16th-century fort in Mombasa, stands as a memorial to their former power on the Kenya coast. After the Dutch and the English wrested the trade from the Portuguese early in the 17th century, the Zenj states regained their independence.

C

The Omani Dynasty

In the early 19th century Sultan Sayyid Said of Oman conquered all the city-states north of Cape Delgado. Ruling over a commercial empire, he did not try to dominate the Bantu clans in the interior, and eventually moved his capital to the island of Zanzibar in present-day Tanzania. The clove plantations on Zanzibar and the oil-palm groves at Mombasa, developed by Said, needed a large labour force. This need was met by the slave trade. Controlled from Mombasa and Zanzibar, the trade extended into Africa’s interior as far as Zaïre. Swahili slavers sometimes raided weak Bantu clans, but they generally traded for slaves with the stronger African states.

The cruelty of the slave trade revived European interest in Kenya. The British consul in Zanzibar took the lead in the anti-slave-trade movement. By the 1850s, in return for guarantees of continued protection, the sultan had signed treaties limiting the scope of the trade. Finally, in 1873, fearing that the British would support a European takeover of his empire, Said’s son Barghash agreed to abolition.

D

British Rule

The British consul from 1873 to 1886 was John Kirk, who advised Sultan Barghash to raise an army and annex most of eastern Kenya and Tanzania. Refusing this advice, the Sultan was helpless in the face of European territorial ambitions. German imperialists led the way, and their claims were upheld at the Congress of Berlin. In 1886 the British recognized the German sphere of influence over coastal Tanganyika (part of present-day Tanzania), retaining Kenya for themselves.

A further territorial division took place in 1890. For a time British interests in Kenya were maintained by the Imperial British East Africa Company, but in 1896 the British Foreign Office assumed direct control, mainly because of the decision to build a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. British annexation was not seriously contested by any of the Bantu or Maasai. In 1902 all Kenya became a dependency under the Colonial Office, and was the British base of operations in the protracted East African campaign against the Germans during World War I.

The type of government established in Kenya was the Crown Colony system. The governor and the secretariat were appointed from London. Most Africans continued to be ruled by their own leaders under the general guidance and supervision of a British district officer. Tribal lands were guaranteed, but all unoccupied territory became Crown land. Even before 1900 some white colonists had recognized the economic value of the highlands and had begun to settle the fertile lands adjacent to Nairobi.

By the end of World War I there were more than 9,000 Europeans in Kenya, and much of the highlands had been reserved for continual white settlement. The government, though claiming to be concerned with “native paramountcy”, in practice favoured the white minority. The depression of the 1930s and a rapidly expanding population showed the inadequacy of the land reserved for Africans. Unable to sustain themselves by farming, many migrated to the towns in search of work. A nationalist organization, the Kenya African Union (KAU), was formed in 1944 and campaigned for the redistribution of land. In 1947 Jomo Kenyatta, a prominent Kikuyu, became its leader.

E

The Mau Mau Uprising

In 1952 a Kikuyu secret society, the Mau Mau, began an uprising against colonial rule. In practice, however, much of the violence was directed against other Kikuyu. During the next four years, 13,000 Kikuyu were killed compared with just over 30 Europeans. Although the uprising did not spread to other indigenous groups, it cost the government dearly in security operations and caused a political crisis. KAU was banned and its leader, Kenyatta, was imprisoned for alleged complicity in Mau Mau.

However, the colonial authorities had to face the inevitability of change. By 1956, when the violence ended, they had abandoned their pro-settler policies. Africans were beginning to be involved in government, in a process—like that already taking place in West Africa—which would lead to majority rule and independence. A new African political party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), was formed and won a majority of seats in a pre-independence general election held in 1961. However, KANU refused to form a government while Kenyatta was still in prison. Released in 1961 he led the party to a decisive election victory in 1963. Kenya became an independent state on December 12, 1963.