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 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.
The King's African Rifles (KAR) was a British Colonial Auxiliary Forces regiment raised from Britain's East African colonies in 1902. It primarily carried out internal security duties within these colonies along with military service elsewhere during the world wars and other conflicts, such as the Malayan Emergency and the Mau Mau uprising. The regiment's enlisted soldiers were drawn from the native Africans, while most officers were seconded from the British Army. During the 1960s, as part of the decolonisation of Africa, more African officers were commissioned into the regiment before it was gradually disbanded. KAR battalions would go on to form the core of newly established armed forces throughout East Africa.
The Protectorate of Uganda was a protectorate of the British Empire from 1894 to 1962. In 1893 the Imperial British East Africa Company transferred its administration rights of territory consisting mainly of the Kingdom of Buganda to the British government.
A resident minister, or resident for short, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indirect rule.
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 territorial evolution of the British Empire is considered to have begun with the foundation of the English colonial empire in the late 16th century. Since then, many territories around the world have been under the control of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states. When the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1707 by the union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, the latter country's colonial possessions passed to the new state. Similarly, when Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801 to form the United Kingdom, control over its colonial possessions passed to the latter state. Collectively, these territories are referred to as the British Empire. When much of Ireland gained independence in 1922 as the Irish Free State, the other territories of the empire remained under the control of the United Kingdom.
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 Kenya Regiment was a unit of the British Army recruited primarily among white settlers in Kenya and to a lesser extent Uganda. Formed in 1937, it was disbanded at the oubreak of World War II in 1939. It was reformed in 1950 and participated in the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising (1952–56). It was finally disbanded on Kenyan independence in May 1963.
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 Sultanate of Zanzibar, also known as the Zanzibar Sultanate, was an East African Muslim state controlled by the Sultan of Zanzibar, in place between 1856 and 1964. The Sultanate's territories varied over time, and after a period of decline, the state had sovereignty over only the Zanzibar Archipelago and a 16-kilometre-wide (10 mi) strip along the Kenyan coast, with the interior of Kenya constituting the British Kenya Colony and the coastal strip administered as a de facto part of that colony.
The Somaliland Camel Corps (SCC) was a British Colonial Auxiliary Forces unit which was raised in British Somaliland. It existed from 1914 until 1944.
Indians in Kenya, often known as Kenyan Asians, are citizens and residents of Kenya with ancestral roots in the Indian subcontinent. Significant Indian migration to modern-day Kenya began following the creation of the British East Africa Protectorate in 1895, which had strong infrastructure links with Bombay in British India. Indians in Kenya predominantly live in the major urban areas of Nairobi and Mombasa, with a minority living in rural areas.
East Africa Command was a Command of the British Army. Until 1947 it was under the direct control of the Army Council and thereafter it became the responsibility of Middle East Command. It was disbanded on 11 December 1963, the day before Kenya became independent, and replaced by British Land Forces Kenya, tasked with withdrawing all remaining British troops. All remaining troops left by December 1964 and British Land Forces Kenya was disestablished.
Sir Geoffrey Francis Archer was an English ornithologist, big game hunter and colonial official. He was Commissioner and then Governor of British Somaliland between 1913 and 1922, and was responsible for finally quelling the twenty-year-long Dervish resistance.
Sir Charles Calvert Bowring was a British colonial administrator, mainly in Kenya, who was later Governor and Commander in Chief of the Nyasaland Protectorate from 1923 to 1929.
General elections were held in East Africa Protectorate in March and April 1920, the first elections in the country. The Legislative Council had previously consisted entirely of appointed members. The new Council consisted of 11 elected white members, two appointed members representing the Indian population and one appointed member representing the Arab population, as well as a number of appointees by the Governor. This allowed the Council representative, although not responsible government. The territory became Kenya Colony on 23 July.
The Hilton Young Commission was a Commission of Inquiry appointed in 1926 to look into the possible closer union of the British territories in East and Central Africa. These were individually economically underdeveloped, and it was suggested that some form of association would result both in cost savings and their more rapid development. The Commission recommended an administrative union of the East African mainland territories, possibly to be joined later by the Central African ones. It also proposed that the legislatures of each territory should continue and saw any form of self-government as being a long-term aspiration. It did however reject the possibility of the European minorities in Kenya or Northern Rhodesia establishing political control in those territories, and rejected the claim of Kenyan Asians for the same voting rights as Europeans. Although the commission's recommendations on an administrative union were not followed immediately, closer ties in East Africa were established in the 1940s. However, in Central Africa, its report had the effect of encouraging European settlers to seek closer association with Southern Rhodesia, in what became in 1953 the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
The Legislative Council of Kenya (LegCo) was the legislature of Kenya between 1907 and 1963. It was modelled on the Westminster system. It began as a nominated, exclusively European institution and evolved into an elected legislature with universal suffrage. It was succeeded by the National Assembly in 1963.
The Uganda Volunteer Reserve was a military unit of the Uganda Protectorate. The UVR was established in March 1903 with support from the British government's Colonial Defence Committee (CDC). The CDC promoted the establishment of such forces in the self-governing parts of the British Empire from which regular British Army troops had been withdrawn. The UVR was organised around "rifle corps" of a minimum of 15 men. Initially only one corps was established, at Entebbe, but a second, at Kampala, was established in June 1914. The members of the UVR were required to attend rifle practice annually and were unpaid, except for a bonus for meeting a minimum marksmanship standard.
Kenyaportal 
