White Highlands | |
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Region | |
Etymology: Area where white colonists lived. | |
Country | Kenya |
Time zone | UTC+3:00 (EAT) |
The White Highlands is an area in the central uplands of Kenya. It was traditionally the homeland of indigenous Central Kenyan communities up to the colonial period, when it became the centre of European settlement in colonial Kenya, and between 1902 and 1961 was officially reserved for the exclusive use of Europeans by the colonial government.
The first European explorers and administrators used the term Highlands to refer to the region no less than 5,000 feet (1,524 m) above sea level, which was best suited climatically for the Europeans to reside. [1] During the process of settlement, the term came to be used for the areas not already settled by local African tribes. [1] As The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1902 permitted land grants only to Europeans, the Highlands came to mean only the lands Europeans could own and manage.
To many early explorers and administrators, the cool climate and absence of populations over large swathes of the Highlands, made it a uniquely attractive area for European settlement in sub-tropical Africa. [1] In 1893, the explorer Frederick Lugard, whilst lobbying for a railway in East Africa, noted that European settlement in the region was not feasible until the cooler Highlands were made accessible. This view was echoed by Sir Harry Johnston who, on completion of the Uganda Railway, noted of the Highlands: [1]
"Here we have a territory admirably suited for a white man's country, and I can say this, with no thought of injustice to any native race, for the country in question is either utterly uninhabited for miles and miles or at most its inhabitants are wandering hunters who have no settled home, or whose fixed habitation is the lands outside the healthy area."
In 1902, Sir Charles Eliot, then British Commissioner of the Protectorate, encouraged settlement of the Highlands for farming. Commissioner Eliot, a leading critic of building the railway, believed the only way to recoup the money spent on its construction was by opening up the Highlands for farming. [2] In his view, only European settlers and agriculture could develop the region and generate the necessary funds to support the colonial administration. [2] Eliot's view was supported by pioneer settlers such as The 3rd Baron Delamere and Ewart Grogan, who believed that they had a civilising mission to transform the entire country into a modern industrialised "White Man's Country". [2]
By 1903 there were about 100 European settlers in the Highlands. [3] A large proportion of the settlers hailed from South Africa including 280 Boers from the Transvaal who settled in the Uasin Gishu plateau in 1908.
By 1914, there were around a thousand European settlers in the Highlands. [3] In 1914, around twenty percent of the leases held in the region were held by 13 individuals or groups. [3] The granting of leases to settlers for low prices resulted in rampant land speculation, to the extent that by 1930 approximately sixty five percent of land reserved for Europeans was not under any form of agriculturally productive activity. [3]
When European settlement began, the Highlands were primarily inhabited by nomadic pastoralists and this absence of settled agrarian communities allowed British officials to describe the region as uninhabited. [4] At the time, the African population was distributed between cultivating tribes and pastoralist people. The cultivating tribes existed mainly in the high rainfall areas of Nyanza and the slopes at the foot of Mount Kenya such as the Aberdares, Elgeyo and the hills of Ukambani. [1] The intervening areas consisted of extensive but sparsely inhabited plains, at over 5,000 feet, where rainfall was more uncertain and pastoralists instead relied on the grazing of animals. European settlement was predominately in these extensive plains, traditionally inhabited by the Maasai tribe.
At the turn of the century, the Maasai had been decimated by a concurrence of natural disasters. Accompanying a smallpox epidemic was a severe drought and an invasion of locusts which consumed vegetation over large tracts of land, whilst rinderpest had killed large numbers of cattle resulting in starvation within the community. [5] The Maasai entered into treaties with British officials to surrender large amounts of land, which reduced manpower meant they were unable to defend against rival tribes. [5] Of the 12,000 square miles of European settled land, 7,000 consisted of former Masai grazing grounds abandoned under agreements between 1904 and 1913, and large parts of remaining areas, such as the Uasin Gishu plateau, were uninhabited. [1]
British officials also alienated land from other tribes, whom the Maasai had pushed to woodlands on the fringes of the Highlands. [5] These tribes practised shifting cultivation, resulting in large areas of land remaining abandoned for a number of years. [5] Similar disasters as afflicted the Maasai also caused havoc amongst these tribes and, between 1901 and 1902, a famine resulted in the Kikuyu losing between twenty and fifty percent of their population on their frontier with the Maasai. [5] Many survivors sought refuge amongst relatives elsewhere in their domain, but by leaving their land it made the frontier appear disused to European officials. [5] Before the famine, the Kikuyu had been buying up parcels of land in the frontier for individual holdings. As had happened in colonies in North America, when British officials later began paying the Kikuyu for that land, they were acquiring the land freehold under colonial law. [5] However, the Kikuyu were allowed to believe the British were only renting the land until the Kikuyu wished to reclaim it in future, because the transaction had not followed native customs. [5] This difference in cultural understandings of land tenure was a contributing factor in the Mau Mau Rebellion.
The reservation of the White Highlands for Europeans by administrative practice was ended by the Land Control Regulations in 1961. [1]
Initially the region was not clearly defined, instead lying between two points on the railway track, namely Kiu and Fort Ternan, and later from Sultan Hamud to Kibigori. [1] It was not until 1939 that the boundaries were defined in the 7th Schedule to The Crown Lands Ordinance under authority of the Kenya (Highlands) Order in Council, 1939. The Order also established a Highlands Board with a majority elected by the Legislative Council to advise and make recommendations on the disposal of land in the region. [1]
Today, the region is at the heart of Kenya's economy. It is the country's best served region by road and rail and has many flourishing cities such as Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kitale, Thika, Kericho and Nyeri. [6] Although covering only five percent of Kenya's total land area, it produces most of Kenya's agricultural exports, particularly tea, coffee, sisal and pyrethrum. [6]
A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a multi-ethnic state. The Wanga Kingdom was formally established in the late 17th century. The Kingdom covered from the Jinja in Uganda to Naivasha in the East of Kenya. This is the first time the Wanga people and Luhya tribe were united and led by a centralized leader, a king, known as the Nabongo.
The Kalenjin are a group of tribes indigenous to East Africa, residing mainly in what was formerly the Rift Valley Province in Kenya and the Eastern slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. They number 6,358,113 individuals per the Kenyan 2019 census and an estimated 273,839 in Uganda according to the 2014 census mainly in Kapchorwa, Kween and Bukwo districts.
Uasin Gishu County is one of the 47 counties of Kenya located in the former Rift Valley Province. Eldoret has the county's largest population centre as well as its administrative and commercial centre..It is bordered by Elgeyo-Marakwet to the East, Trans Nzoia to the North, Kakamega to the west, Nandi and Kericho to the South West.Baringo to the South East. It is a highland plateau with altitudes falling gently from 2,700 metres (8,900 ft) above sea level to about 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) above sea level. The topography is higher to the east and declines gently towards the western border".
East Africa Protectorate was a British protectorate in the African Great Lakes, occupying roughly the same area as present-day Kenya, from the Indian Ocean inland to the border with Uganda in the west. Controlled by the United Kingdom in the late 19th century, it grew out of British commercial interests in the area in the 1880s and remained a protectorate until 1920 when it became the Colony of Kenya, save for an independent 16-kilometre-wide (10 mi) coastal strip that became the Kenya Protectorate.
The Elgeyo are an ethnic group who are part of the larger Kalenjin ethnic group of Nilotic origin. They live near Eldoret, Kenya, in the highlands of the former Keiyo District, now part of the larger Elgeyo Marakwet County. The Elgeyo originally settled at the foothills of the Elgeyo escarpment, in the area between Kerio river to the east and the escarpment to the west. Due to drought and famine in the valley, the Keiyos climbed the escarpment and started to settle on the highland east of Uasin Gishu plateau. When the British came, the Keiyos were pushed to settle in clusters called reserves.
White people in Kenya or White Kenyans are those born in or resident in Kenya who descend from Europeans and/or identify themselves as White. There is currently a minor but relatively prominent White community in Kenya, mainly descended from British, but also to a lesser extent Italian and Greek, migrants dating from the colonial period.
The Kwavi people were a community commonly spoken of in the folklore of a number of Kenyan and Tanzanian communities that inhabited regions of south-central Kenya and north-central Tanzania at various points in history. The conflicts between the Uasin Gishu/Masai and Kwavi form much of the literature of what are now known as the Iloikop wars.
Nandi County is a county in Kenya in the North Rift, occupying an area of 2,884.4 square kilometres. Its capital, Kapsabet, is the largest town in the county while other towns include Mosoriot, Tinderet, Kobujoi, Kaiboi, Kabiyet and Nandi Hills. According to a 2019 census, the county has a population of 885,711, made up of a number of Kenyan communities, the majority of whom belong to the native tribe called Nandi.
The earliest account of Nairobi's history dates back to 1899 when a railway depot was built in a brackish African swamp occupied by a pastoralist people, the Maasai, the sedentary Akamba people, as well as the agriculturalist Kikuyu people who were all displaced by the colonialists. The railway complex and the building around it rapidly expanded and urbanized until it became the largest city of Kenya and the country's capital. The name Nairobi comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to 'the place of cool waters'. However, Nairobi is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun".
The Kalenjin people are an ethnolinguistic group indigenous to East Africa, with a presence, as dated by archaeology and linguistics, that goes back many centuries. Their history is therefore deeply interwoven with those of their neighboring communities as well as with the histories of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
The Sengwer people are an indigenous community who primarily live in the Embobut forest in the western highlands of Kenya and in scattered pockets across Trans Nzoia, West Pokot and Elgeyo-Marakwet counties. The Sengwer are sometimes portrayed as a component of the Marakwet people but are a distinct ethnic grouping with a distinct language.
The Settlement of Nandi was the historical process by which the various communities that today make up the Nandi people of Kenya settled in Nandi County. It is captured in the folklore of the Nandi as a distinct process composed of a series of inward migrations by members from various Kalenjin ortinwek.
The Masai Agreement of 1904 was a treaty signed between the British East Africa Protectorate government and leaders of the Maasai tribe between 10 and 15 August 1904. It is often wrongly called the Anglo-Maasai Agreement, but that was not its proper name. The Maasai tribe agreed to cede possession of pastures in the Central Rift Valley Rift Valley in return for exclusive rights to two territories, a southern reserve in Kajiado and a northern reserve in Laikipia.
Mutai is a term used by the Maa-speaking communities of Kenya to describe a period of wars, usually triggered by disease and/or drought affecting widespread areas of the Rift Valley region of Kenya. According to Samburu and Maasai tradition, two periods of Mutai occurred during the nineteenth century. The second Mutai lasted from the 1870s to the 1890s.
The Iloikop wars were a series of wars between the Maasai and a community referred to as Kwavi and later between Maasai and alliance of reformed Kwavi communities. These were pastoral communities that occupied large tracts of East Africa's savannas during the late 18th and 19th centuries. These wars occurred between c.1830 and 1880.
The Chemwal people were a Kalenjin-speaking society that inhabited regions of western and north-western Kenya as well as the regions around Mount Elgon at various times through to the late 19th century. The Nandi word Sekker was used by Pokot elders to describe one section of a community that occupied the Elgeyo escarpment and whose territory stretched across the Uasin Gishu plateau. This section of the community appears to have neighbored the Karamojong who referred to them as Siger, a name that derived from the Karimojong word esigirait. The most notable element of Sekker/Chemwal culture appears to have been a dangling adornment of a single cowrie shell attached to the forelock of Sekker women, at least as of the late 1700s and early 1800s.
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The Siger people were a community commonly spoken of in the folklore of a number of Kenyan communities that inhabited regions of northwestern Kenya at various points in history.
Sir William Morris Carter, CBE (1873–1960) was a British lawyer and colonial administrator. He served as registrar and judge in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika between 1902 and 1924. He tried without success to alienate lands held by Africans in Uganda so they could be organized as European plantations using native laborers. He chaired the 1925 Southern Rhodesia land commission and the 1932–1933 Kenya Land Commission, both of which alienated Africans from their land and allocated large areas for exclusively European settlement. He served on the Royal Commission on Palestine (1936–1937).
The famine in central Kenya in 1899 is regarded as a devastating catastrophe in Kenyan history. It spread rapidly from 1898 in the central region of the country around Mount Kenya after several consecutive years of low rainfall. The prevalence of locusts, cattle diseases that decimated the livestock population and the growing demand for food from travelling caravans of British, Swahili and Arab traders also contributed to the food shortage. The famine was accompanied by a smallpox epidemic that resulted in the depopulation of entire regions.