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 truly 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 Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities. Dominated by Kikuyu, Meru and Embu fighters, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba and Maasai who fought against the European colonists in Kenya, the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment.
Jomo Kenyatta was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He was the country's first president and played a significant role in the transformation of Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and a conservative, he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.
The Kikuyu are a Bantu ethnic group native to East Africa Central Kenya. At a population of 8,148,668 as of 2019, they account for 17.13% of the total population of Kenya, making them Kenya's largest ethnic group.
The Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), led by James Beauttah and Joseph Kang'ethe, was a political organisation in colonial Kenya formed in 1924 to act on behalf of the Gĩkũyũ community by presenting their concerns to the British government. One of its greatest grievances was the expropriation of the most productive land by British settlers from African farmers. Most members of the organisation were from the Gĩkũyũ tribe.
The Kenya African Union (KAU) was a political organization in colonial Kenya, formed in October 1944 prior to the appointment of the first African to sit in the Legislative Council. In 1960 it became the current Kenya African National Union (KANU).
The Luo of Kenya and Tanzania are a Nilotic ethnic group native to western Kenya and the Mara Region of northern Tanzania in East Africa. The Luo are the fourth-largest ethnic group (10.65%) in Kenya, after the Kikuyu (17.13%), the Luhya (14.35%) and the Kalenjin (13.37%). The Tanzanian Luo population was estimated at 1.1 million in 2001 and 3.4 million in 2020. They are part of a larger group of related Luo peoples who inhabit an area ranging from South Sudan, southwestern Ethiopia, northern and eastern Uganda, southwestern Kenya, and northern Tanzania.
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.
John William Arthur was a medical missionary and Church of Scotland minister who served in British East Africa (Kenya) from 1907 to 1937. He was known simply as Doctor Arthur to generations of Africans.
Harry Thuku was a Kenyan born in Kiambu, Mitahato village. As a politician, he was one of the pioneers in the development of modern African nationalism in Kenya. He helped found the Young Kikuyu Association and the East African Association before being arrested and exiled from 1922 to 1931. In 1932 he became President of the Kikuyu Central Association, in 1935 founded the Kikuyu Provincial Association, and in 1944 founded the Kenya African Study Union. Opposed to the Mau Mau movement, he later retired to coffee-farming.
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".
James Beauttah (1889–1985) was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and political leader.
The Swynnerton Plan was a colonial agricultural policy that appeared as a government report in 1954 in Kenya, aiming to intensify the development of agricultural practice in the Kenya Colony. The plan was geared to expanding native Kenyan's cash-crop production through improved markets and infrastructure, the distribution of appropriate inputs, and the gradual consolidation and enclosure of land holdings.
The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, commonly known as British Kenya or British East Africa, was part of the British Empire in Africa from 1920 until 1963. It was established when the former East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a British Crown colony in 1920. Technically, the "Colony of Kenya" referred to the interior lands, while a 16 km (10 mi) coastal strip, nominally on lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar, was the "Protectorate of Kenya", but the two were controlled as a single administrative unit. The colony came to an end in 1963 when an ethnic Kenyan majority government was elected for the first time and eventually declared independence.
Reuel John Mugo Gatheru was a Kenyan writer known for his 1964 memoir, Child of Two Worlds, which describes his early life in Kenya and his education abroad.
The Devonshire White Paper or Devonshire Declaration was a document written in 1923 by the colonial secretary Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, regarding the status of settlers and natives in the Kenya Colony, and East Africa more broadly. The paper stated that whenever the interests of the native Africans clashed with those of Asian, European, or Arab settlers, those of the Africans should prevail. The Declaration blocked the move towards self-government advocated by the colonialists, and in its place advocated a policy of trusteeship, whereby the imperial state would protect the interests of Africans. Although the Paper had little effect on the welfare of native Africans, it nonetheless set a precedent for future conflict resolution between the various groups living in the colony.
Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru was a Kikuyu woman and a Kenyan political activist remembered for leading the protest after the arrest of Harry Thuku, that resulted in her death. Muthoni Nyanjiru was born in Weithaga, Murang'a, Kenya, although her date or year of birth are not recorded. At the time she was shot and killed in 1922, she had been living in Nairobi with her stepdaughter, Elizabeth Waruiru.
Manilal Ambalal Desai was an Indian born activist and journalist who played a prominent role in Kenyan politics during the 1920s.
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).
Pan-Africanism is a cultural and political ideology calling for the unification of the various African communities and their diasporadic counterparts for the purpose of empowering each other. The heights of the movement is primarily characterized in the west by the black nationalist struggles of Marcus Garvey, and the push for greater self determination by W.E.B Du Bois during the early twentieth century. The literature is much vaster once one leaves the western world and enters the African continent, where one can find a consistent effort in much of the territory to unify themselves against the common enemy of Imperialism. Pan-Africanism's influence can be characterized through its contributions to art, media, and politics.
