4

Races and Migrations

The African population of Kenya at this time was estimated to be around 3 million, containing a great diversity of tribes.¹ No statistics are reliable but there were believed to be about 3,000 Europeans, possibly 4,000 by the time the 1914 war broke out. Asians outnumbered Europeans heavily and can be credibly guessed at about 20,000. There were round about 10,000 Arabs at the coast and a few up-country, but it was a very difficult matter to draw a dividing line between Arab and Swahili in the very mixed population at the coast.

The total area of the British East Africa Protectorate in 1914 was 210,750 square miles, not counting the province of Jubaland, which was ceded to Italy at the end of the war, to become part of Italian Somaliland. A little more than half of the whole area was taken up by Turkana and the Northern Province. With a few attractive exceptions such as the neighbourhood of Mount Marsabit, the land to the north was arid and bare, sparsely occupied by desert tribes at a density which was then probably not more than two persons to the square mile on average. It was a region where the keeping of the peace between tribe and tribe was the major preoccupation of British rule. Only very limited material progress was made, and potentialities for development were never fully explored. The inhabitants were stockmen, keeping camels, donkeys, cattle, sheep and goats. The principal occupant tribes were the Nilotic/Hamitic Turkana and Samburu, the Hamitic Galla and the Somali, regarded as being of Semitic origin, although obviously with a considerable Hamitic admixture.²

The remainder of the country, the southern half of Kenya, was just over 100,000 square miles. The climate was hot and moist at the coast and hot and dry at Lake Victoria level. The intervening area, including the Highlands and the major African tribal lands, with the exception of the Luo and Abaluhya near the lake, and the Nyika in the coast hinterland, was high and healthy, often cold and misty in the early morning, but nearly always sunny at midday, with two fairly well defined but often capricious rainy seasons.

The native inhabitants of the country, excluding the Somalis and Galla of the Northern Province, were nearly all of three races: Bantu, Nilotic and Nilotic/Hamitic. Whence these peoples came is largely a mystery, particularly in regard to the Bantu.³ The proportions were roughly two thirds Bantu, Nilotic a sixth and Nilo/Hamitic a sixth. If they were to be classed by the amount of land they occupied instead of by their numerical strength, the last named, being much more thinly spread, would show much higher.

The word bantu, which simply meant ‘men’, was the generic name applied to a group of tribes who spoke related languages, a characteristic of which was that they used this word or some variant of it, such as watu in Swahili or wantu in Kikuyu or plain bantu in Luganda, for ‘men’. These related languages were all synthetic, admitting of inflections both before and after the verb stem, but mainly before, to signify differences of person, tense and mood and also a positive or negative connotation. The most widely known language of this group was Ki-Swahili, the language of the Swahili of the East African coast. Although it was widely used as a lingua franca, it was not really typical, having a large number of Arab words in it.

It is not certain whether all the tribes who spoke Bantu languages were of one race or whether there was an invasion of a people so dominant that it was able to impose its language in the course of generations upon tribes of other races. One theory is that they came in waves from the north east from about the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, and while most Bantu tribes in Kenya admitted to having come into their present homes from somewhere vaguely in that direction, there was at least one tribe – the Kitui Akamba – who professed no recollection whatever of having been anywhere at any time except where they were.⁴ Another theory was that they came from central Africa, the Abaluhya along the northern shores of Lake Victoria, and the other tribes from the direction of Kilimanjaro. Wherever they came from, the Kenya and Uganda Bantu were about the northernmost of the Bantu tribes in this part of Africa. In Kenya they were just over two thirds of the population but occupied very much less than half of the land. Going south into Tanganyika the proportion increased until, by the time the central Tanganyika railway was reached, the African population was almost entirely Bantu right down to the Cape. In East Africa they were mixed farmers, with the accent on agriculture rather than livestock, although they might well have preferred the latter if they had had the space available. The principal Bantu tribes in Kenya were the Kikuyu, Akamba, Abaluhya, Meru and the group collectively known as the Nyika – the Giriama, Chonye, Kauma, Jabana and others, nine sections in all⁵ – who inhabited the rather barren and uninviting area behind the coast belt. The word nyika, incidentally, was not a tribal name but merely meant grassland, as typifying the area in which they lived. The Arabs in the days of slavery used to call them wa-Toro or runaways.

The second largest racial group was the Nilotic, of which the only true representative in Kenya was the large Luo tribe, who were closely akin to the Acholi and Lango in Uganda. They were an agricultural people, having insufficient land for stock rearing on any large scale, and showed little proclivity that way. They were not particularly tall but were big-boned and thick set. They had a fondness for fish and fishing. The Luo were believed to have come into Kenya from the Nile during the seventeenth century.⁶ As they seemed to have kept their sub-tribal organisation and traditions intact, it would appear that they had come in units of some strength. Their move southwards was still continuing and they were making considerable penetration into Tanganyika, but they were doing this individually or by small family groups.

Except as regards language, there were many points of similarity in the way of life and, to some extent, in appearance between the Nilotic Luo and the Bantu group of tribes – Maragoli and others – who 1ived next to them in Nyanza Province and now call themselves Abaluhya.⁷ For some reason that is not very plain the Luo and Abaluhya were lumped together officially as Kavirondo, sometimes with the prefix Nilotic or Bantu to distinguish them. The name Kavirondo was said to be a combination of Kaffir and Murono, the latter being the local nickname for the muzzle-loading muskets that had been introduced into North Nyanza by Swahili filibusters about 1900. But that is as may be, there were other common features which the Kavirondo shared at this time. There was a high degree of nakedness among both men and women, but the Luo women wore fringes in front and tails like horses behind. The Abaluhya of Kakamega location in North Kavirondo or North Nyanza, to give it its later name, were the only known instance in Kenya where absolute nakedness prevailed among both men and women, without even a cord around the waist. The elders on both sides, however, especially the Luo, wore skins and elaborate headdresses of cowrie shells and ostrich feathers. The warriors, too, were imposingly adorned, with more apparent regard for show than for fighting. A further common feature of the Kavirondo was that all adult males had lower jaw teeth extracted: the Luo, six, and the Abaluhya four. Neither was accounted very warlike but they made good labourers for heavy work and offered themselves with less reluctance than any other Kenya tribe at this time, except perhaps for the Kikuyu. The Kikuyu, however, were seldom prepared to travel far from home.

The Nilotic/Hamitic element, apart from the purely Hamitic Galla who had penetrated south to the Tana River area from their tribal home in Abyssinia, consisted of the Masai and Nandi groups. They were believed to have entered Kenya from the north between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Nandi group, now often called the Kalenjin, coming first.⁸ The Kalenjin comprised the Nandi and Kipsigis, who were virtually one tribe, and several smaller elements such as the Elgeyo. They were a small-boned, athletic people, comparable to the Masai, but not closely related. They had a similar organisation for war, but, unlike the Masai, were not averse to progress. Although mainly stock-owners and good herdsmen, they also cultivated shambas. All the tribes of Masai and Nandi groups were much given to cattle stealing, regarding them as fair game. When caught they would commonly admit the offence readily and regard the term of imprisonment which followed as a distinction rather than a stigma – a very likeable people.⁹

The Masai, who were related to the Samburu, were traditionally a purely stock-owning people. They were a handsome tribe with a dignified and unselfconscious carriage, very brave and loyal to their word. They were the only tribe in East Africa to respect the wild animals, being content to share their land with them without considering that they spoiled the grazing for their cattle. Something like a mutual tolerance had developed between cattle and game, but they were kept away from areas where the wildebeest had calved down. Otherwise there was little avoiding action. Living almost exclusively on blood and milk, the Masai seldom ate meat and, until recently, no grain or vegetable food at all, except roots. There was, however, one section which practised agriculture and, since the Masai had begun to marry Kikuyu wives, some cultivation was seen. Thus things were changing, but the Masai were very slow to adapt. They still kept their tribal dress and, so far as was allowed, their warlike organisation. Although they were warriors, there were few in the army or police force, largely because they did not take kindly to individual discipline outside their own tribal authority. Their warriors still went about in traditional dress, carrying spears and with their hair and bodies covered in red ochre. Although it is true that their name and fame were known all over the country, and nowhere west of the Tana River had been safe from their raids, there were, nevertheless, tribes who had been their match. The Masai were night raiders but, in the daylight and in the open, the Nandi and Kipsigis were at least their equal, and the Akamba, although not an aggressive people, had always been ready and able to defend their borders against Masai spearmen with their bows and arrows.

The Dorobo, Sanye, Boni, Dahalo, Mukogodo and others came to be known collectively as the Dorobo. It was a Masai word meaning tsetse fly, but they called themselves the Okiek.¹⁰ They were the forest tribes. If one had to assign them to one of the racial groups one would probably say Hamitic. They may have been aboriginals of East Africa, but more likely they were tribal offshoots. It seems that some tribes had, as it were, a forest-dwelling section barely or grudgingly recognized as fellow tribesmen. The Dorobo, for instance, claimed affinity with the Masai, and some with the Nandi, while the Sanye at the coast and the Boni up the Tana River may well have been of Galla origin. There were, no doubt, also tribal outcasts and others amongst them who, with their descendants, had taken to life in the bush. Their common feature was that they lived by hunting and bee-keeping. Although they were often said to have lived in or under trees, it is unlikely that this was ever wholly true. Rather they moved about very freely as their occupation demanded, and did not much encumber themselves with permanent huts. As time progressed they became more settled.

After the period of the great migrations was over, the tribes had settled down in their lands in comparative security. Inter-tribal fighting, where it occurred, was mainly confined to cattle raiding and wanton attacks on border villages. In such raids the Masai were the chief aggressors until the later years of the nineteenth century. Otherwise, at least with the Bantu and Nilotic groups, relations were normally peaceful and, when fighting occurred, it was more likely to be between clans of the same tribe disputing a boundary than between one tribe and another. After the Nandi expeditions and settlement with the Masai, the protectorate government had no great difficulty in establishing general peace.¹¹

***

The Arabs and the people known as Swahili inhabited the coast belt. Practically without exception they were Mohammedans, although the earliest waves of Arab settlement dated from before the Prophet. Coming from all parts of Arabia but mostly from Oman, the Arabs belonged to two main groups: the Swahili in the Malindi area and the Mazrui around Mombasa. The Lamu Arabs were more mixed and there was a suggestion of a Persian element. The word swahili meant a coast-dweller. It was probably applied, in the first instance, to Arabs of an earlier wave of settlement who had come so long ago as to have acquired a local character, by mixture of blood or otherwise. In the course of time, however, all the Arab stock became much diluted by the practice of slave-owners taking concubines from among their freed slaves.¹²

The Swahili language must have taken several generations in its development. It was an amalgam of Bantu grammar with a considerable assortment of Arabic expressions and words, and it differed from one area to another, so that Zanzibar, Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu all had different versions.¹³ The variations depended, at least in part, on the African language of the neighbourhood and the language spoken in the area from which the slaves were drawn. Swahili was, nevertheless, very much a language in its own right, pleasant sounding and softer than most of the Bantu group. Although it was a difficult language for Europeans to master correctly, it stripped down easily into simplified versions, one being sometimes called ki-settla.¹⁴ Swahili was a genuine lingua franca in the sense that one could get by with it almost anywhere, but it was not the first language of any tribe outside the immediate coastal strip. It was not much used between Africans upcountry except in the towns or on European farms where there was a mixture of race or tribe. It came easily to the Bantu, but the Nilotics had to learn it like anybody else.

The coast was going through a period of deep depression at this time.¹⁵ Although the Arabs had been compensated in cash for the loss of their slaves, they were lost without them, and they had little to barter with the dhows from Oman. Many mortgaged their houses to Indians and then found themselves unable to pay the interest. The Indians who foreclosed on them were left with useless, empty houses on their hands, and trade was at a standstill. The freed slaves, too, were elderly and bewildered. Government kept a vote, curiously called ‘Maintenance of Slaves’, to provide doles to the most distressed. Half a generation had to pass before the coast began to look up again.

Some Indians had been at the coast for generations as traders, but they only came upcountry with the railway construction.¹⁶ Although most of the original coolies were returned to India at the end of the work, there were many of clerical and artisan grades who stayed on, as did some others, particularly Sikhs, as carpenters, masons, and builders. Some rich Indians at the coast operated in a big way as merchants, having in some cases amassed their initial capital from profitable deals in ivory and, in others, by money-lending transactions with Arabs. But upcountry they were generally earning a precarious livelihood by petty trading from corrugated iron shacks. They were capable of holding on in their little dukas through years of very slender profit, often in remote and unprotected areas in circumstances of great discomfort and no little risk. These people were certainly the pioneers of trade in the African tribal areas. Although any person could take up a shop plot in the trading centres established at about 15- to 20-mile intervals along ox-wagon routes, they were, in practice, an Indian monopoly, and it was many years before Africans were able to compete. As for the Goans, they were officially ranked as Asiatics, but they were Roman Catholics and proud of their Portuguese ancestry. For many years they filled nearly all the clerical posts in government offices loyally and without complaint. As clerks, artisans and retail shopkeepers, the Indian and Goan communities were thus performing a useful service to the country at large at a time when Europeans had not the numbers and Africans had not the experience to do these jobs themselves.¹⁷

Before 1914 Kenya was for the European an ox-cart and foot-slogging country.¹⁸ Motor cars were so much out of the question along those muddy tracks that they were hardly even imagined. Horses could only be kept in a few fly-free and favoured areas, but if kept at all, they were mainly for pleasure and did not come much into the working picture. Mules, perhaps, but not horses. And hardly anywhere were the roads really fit even for ox-carts. There was a demand for laws to keep cartwheel rims wide but, whatever was done, the roads were always deeply rutted and churned up in the rains.

Probably the only export crop which had been established at this time, and was able to bear the cost of transport and make a profit, was coffee.¹⁹ Wheat had been planted but had not yet developed on any scale. Other cereals, such as maize, were only grown for internal use in the country. Cattle ranching and dairy farming, which were to become key industries, could only be established slowly and at great cost, for farms had to be fenced and precautions taken against East Coast fever, pleuropneumonia, and rinderpest. There was also pasture to be improved and deficiencies in the soil discovered and remedied. Bank overdrafts grew. Fortunately there were a few European settlers who had access to capital and were bold enough to venture it on new enterprises and experiments of doubtful outcome. Such, outstandingly, were Lord Delamere and Captain Grogan. They set a lead which at a much later date government was able to follow and expand, for there were no financial resources available at that time for the establishment of agricultural or research services in any effective degree.²⁰ Some of the Christian mission stations also did useful experimental work.

Of plantation crops, coconuts were fairly extensively cultivated at the coast, an enterprise which was mainly in the hands of Arabs and seldom brought much reward. The few Europeans who tried it had disappointing results. Others tried rubber in the Malindi area, but none of them succeeded. Sisal, both at the coast and upcountry, was showing more promise. Coffee was doing well in the Highlands below 6,000 feet and was the only permanent crop that could yet be pronounced a success. Gums and wattle trees were fairly extensively planted but, at this stage, mainly for wind breaks or as fuel for the railway. It was already clear that cattle, sheep, cereals and mixed farming were to be the dominant feature of the highland farms above the area of the coffee zone.

Few of the settlers were farmers before they came. They had to learn an unaccustomed job in an unaccustomed country, and not least of their troubles was the management of totally unskilled labour, mostly Luo for heavy work, Kikuyu for coffee, and, provided that a friendly connection had first been established, Nandi or Masai for herding. It was for the European settlers a young and vibrant country – young in every sense. The age, even of the veterans, was seldom over 40. Few were married. Most, except the newly arrived, had fought in the South African war – including an element of Cape Dutch on the Uasin Ngishu Plateau who had fought on the other side. Many of these Afrikaners had come in a party by sea, complete with ox wagons and household goods, and, after a period of refitting at the Nakuru railhead, had trekked onwards to their farms. Starting in a hand-to-mouth way, they were to become a very staunch section of the settler community.²¹

Both for settlers and officials it was a hardy, outdoor life. Clothing was mostly bush shirts and shorts and the ubiquitous double terrai hat. The cowboy type of attire, seen for a brief period in later years, was not yet in favour. Game was plentiful in most areas, and, though shooting was mostly for the pot, hunting safaris were not uncommon when other forms of sport were not easily come by. Trophies in the shape of horns and skins were typical adornments of settlers' houses but, despite appearances, it was essentially a work-a-day life, seldom admitting of holidays, and, in any case, travelling was difficult, slow and expensive. The settler not only farmed his land, but was architect of his house and chief builder too. He had also to be his own doctor and to treat minor ailments of those in his care, being required by law to keep a supply of drugs for this purpose.

Malaria was the chief enemy, sharing that distinction with dysentery and similar ailments. To cope with these troubles a box of medicines was issued on payment of 2 rupees to government officials on safari, and most of all the drugs in it I remember the ‘Livingstone Rouser’. The assumption was that one might be so ill and confused with malaria that one would not remember in what order or in what quantity to take aspirin, quinine, cascara and so forth. The ‘Livingstone Rouser’ was for just such an emergency. It was superb, and of most grateful memory.

The missions were a most significant part of European endeavour, and might well have been mentioned before, for they provided not only the early explorers, but also the first Europeans to settle upcountry in permanent homes. The majority of them, however, arrived after the first waves of settlement. Two British missions, the CMS and the Church of Scotland, were among the earliest and firmest established as also were two Roman Catholic missions, the Mill Hill mission, with priests from Holland and Ireland in about equal parts, and the White Fathers from France. The Africa Inland Mission, the Friends Africa Mission, the Seventh Day Adventists and others were mainly American or Canadian. In fact, if it were not for a zoning policy which only slowly became effective, they might have been in danger of treading on each other's heels. Today they need no champion, for the immense value of their work is clear for all to see, but in the early days the practical results of their work were not so obvious. Indeed, it was a popular attitude among the know-alls of the settler community to warn newcomers against engaging a ‘mission boy’ as a servant, as he would probably be dishonest and tale-bearing. There were times, too, when mission dignitaries did not see eye to eye with the provincial administration as to what was fair dealing towards the Africans, and they occasionally fulminated in the Manchester Guardian. But the issues would right themselves and the comparison of views was often of value.²²

Europeans did not figure prominently in trade because it was mostly in Asian hands, apart from a few established firms such as Smith Mackenzie and the IBEA Corporation. Nevertheless, there were a few British stalwarts starting in a small way at about this time who were later to found firms of considerable importance. As for the public services, the members of the medical department were devoted and skilled, but few. Education was left almost entirely to the missions and agricultural services were undeveloped. Occasionally one met a stock inspector on safari or a surveyor mapping out the land. The port and railway services, remarkable in the existing circumstances, were soon to be put to a very severe test when war broke out in 1914, and the efficiency of the police and the post office was beyond anything to be expected in so young a country. The armed forces in East and Central Africa at that time consisted of the KAR, native African troops officered by seconded British Army officers, and organised in four battalions, of which the third was Kenya's own.

1 Kenya's population would have been between 2 million and 3 million in 1900, at a time of terrible mortality due to drought, smallpox among famine-weakened populations, and cattle plagues. The population did not start growing again until the 1920s. Although Kenyans still talk of tribes, with the connotation of ‘descent group’, scholars prefer the term ‘ethnic groups’ since this conveys a looser form of cultural association, more faithful to the mixed origins and interrelations of so-called ‘tribes’. Nonetheless, Fazan's use of ‘tribe’ reflects the understandings of his day.

2 The term Hamitic has been replaced by Cushitic; scholars now emphasise what Fazan calls ‘admixture’ in the makeup of all African peoples. Fazan's Galla are now called Oromo and/or Borana.

3 ‘Bantu expansion’ is still not fully understood. Bantu-speakers probably originated in the forests of what is now the Nigeria–Cameroun frontier; some of their pioneer colonists may have reached East Africa's Great Lakes region around 1000 BCE. The most accessible recent knowledge is found in John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, second edition 2007), pp. 16, 34–6.

4 By the 1920s, when Fazan served among them, Kamba will have become nervous lest more of their land be expropriated for white settlement; in these circumstances many Africans believed that their best defence was to claim ‘indigeneity’ or ‘autochthony’, namely, to deny that they had ever migrated from elsewhere, having been settled where they now were from time immemorial.

5 Now known collectively as the Mijikenda or ‘the nine villages’. For their pre-colonial history, see Thomas T. Spear, The Kaya Complex: A History of the Mijikenda Peoples of the Kenya Coast to 1900 (Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1978).

6 The doyen of Kenya's (and Luo) historians, Bethwell Ogot reckons that the first Luo pioneers arrived in their present location in the late fifteenth century CE. See B. A. Ogot, History of the Southern Luo (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967), 28.

7 For the mixed ethno-linguistic origins and history of the Abaluhya, now more commonly called Luyia, see Gideon S. Were, A History of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya, c. 1500–1930 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967).

8 Nandi and Maasai pioneers probably reached ‘Kenya’ about 500 years earlier than was realised in Fazan's day. For Maasai see (with a fine bibliography of earlier work), Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (eds), Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa (London: James Currey, 1993). Kalenjin means ‘I say to you’, a greeting first widely heard in the Second World War when the colonial government appealed to African loyalties by means of vernacular radio broadcasts. For the process in which ‘Nandi-speakers’ became ‘Kalenjin’, see Gabrielle Lynch, I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

9 Stock theft was more than ‘fair game’, although it was also that. See David Anderson's two articles, ‘Stock theft and moral economy in colonial Kenya’, Africa 56 (1986), pp. 399–416, and ‘Black mischief: Crime, protest and resistance in colonial Kenya’, Historical Journal 36 (1993), pp. 851–77.

10 It is now thought that the Maasai name for Okiek, iltorrobo, indicated their perceived poverty, shown in their lack of livestock. Fazan's comments on their varied origins are, however, supported by modern scholarship, for a summary of which see Spear and Waller, Being Maasai, pp. 5–9.

11 Fazan's calm reflections on the relative absence of pre-colonial ‘tribal war’ – very different from some of his more prejudiced contemporaries – is borne out by modern scholarship. See Richard Reid, War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa: The Patterns and Meanings of State-level Conflict in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: James Currey, 2007), in which the area that became ‘Kenya’ is largely omitted from consideration, thanks to its lack of state-building violence or military elites.

12 For recent scholarship on coastal history, see the references cited in Chapter 1, ‘Historical Background’.

13 Fazan's thoughts on the origins and history of Swahili are not contradicted but vastly expanded in the currently standard work by Derek Nurse and Thomas Hinnebusch, Swahili and Sabaki, a Linguistic History (Berkeley; Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1993).

14 It is well worth trying to find a copy of F. H. Le Breton, Up-country Swahili (Richmond: Simpson, 13 editions from 1936 to 1956), which could be called Teach Yourself Ki-settla, not least for its paranoid conversations with one's cook.

15 For which see Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters.

16 Fazan again shows his unusual lack of prejudice here: many Europeans in colonial Kenya held the self-serving belief that the South Asian community was descended mainly from lower caste ‘coolies’, the navvies who built the railway, and who therefore deserved little political recognition. Robert G. Gregory has contributed most to the history of East Africa's Indians – more properly South Asians since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. See especially, his two books both published in 1993: South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and Social History, 1890–1980 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), and Quest for Equality: Asian Politics in East Africa 1900–1967 (New Delhi: Orient Longman).

17 Mervyn Maciel, Bwana Karani (London: Merlin Books, 1985) is a charming autobiography of a Goan clerk.

18 Officials travelling by ox-cart might hope to average 12 miles per day.

19 The best economic history of Kenya's white farming is Paul Mosley, The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900–1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); for economic history more generally, see R. M. A, van Zwanenberg, with Anne King, An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda 1800–1970 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1975).

20 For Delamere, see Huxley, White Man's Country; for Grogan, Edward Paice, Lost Lion of Empire: The Life of ‘Cape to Cairo’ Grogan (London: HarperCollins, 2001). Fazan gives here the practical justification for Kenya's foundation in racial inequality, an essential assumption in his meditation on the politics of land.

21 Kenya's white settler community has attracted a large literature. See especially, Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987). William Jackson, Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya's White Insane (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) reminds us that not all settlers were masterly. John Lonsdale, ‘Kenya: Home County and African Frontier’, in Robert Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 74–111, is brief; a fuller narrative is given in C. S. Nicholls, Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya (London: Timewell Press, 2005). The most eloquent and prolific author among those who were once white settlers was Elspeth Huxley; of her two semi-autobiographies The Flame Trees of Thika (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959) is better known than its sequel, The Mottled Lizard (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962). Her edition of her mother's letters, Nellie: Letters from Africa (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980), presents a lively picture of an observant farmer, liberal by the standards of her day.

22 Again, there is a large literature on Kenya's missionaries. For the early missions at the coast, see Reed, Pastors, Partners and Paternalists. For coast and interior, see Robert W. Strayer, The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa (London: Heinemann, 1978). For highland Kenya, see John Karanja, Founding an African Faith: Kikuyu Anglican Christianity 1900–1945 (Nairobi: Uzima, 1999); Lawrence M. Njoroge, A Century of Catholic Endeavour: Holy Ghost and Consolata Missions in Kenya (Nairobi: Paulines, 1999); and Derek R. Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of the Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004). For the political disagreements to which Fazan refers, mostly to do with the coercion of African labour for both private and public purposes, the best source documents are in John W. Cell (ed.), By Kenya Possessed: The Correspondence of Norman Leys and J. H. Oldham, 1918–1926 (Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press, 1976). Not all issues righted themselves, especially when concerned with land.