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Who colonized Kenya?

East Africa — the powers that ruled Kenya, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Kenya?

Britain. Declared a protectorate in 1895 and a Crown colony in 1920, Kenya was a white-settler colony until independence on 12 December 1963, after the Mau Mau emergency and its detention camp system.

Kenya was run for the benefit of a settler minority granted the highlands by ordinance, with an African majority tied to estate labour by the kipande pass worn around the neck.

Reference

Who ruled Kenya, and when

before 1895
Kikuyu, Maasai, Luo, Swahili coastal polities
1895–1920
British East Africa Protectorate
1920–1963
Colony of Kenya

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Britain
Independence
12 December 1963
Detention
Tens of thousands held in the Emergency camp system; over a million villagised
Land
The most fertile highlands reserved by law for white settlers
Compensation
£19.9m paid by Britain in 2013 to surviving detainees

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1895

    British East Africa Protectorate declared.

  2. 1902–15

    Crown Lands Ordinances hand the White Highlands to settlers.

  3. 1920

    Kenya becomes a Crown colony; kipande pass system enforced.

  4. 1952–60

    State of Emergency; mass detention, screening and torture.

  5. 1963

    Independence.

  6. 2013

    Britain settles with 5,228 Mau Mau claimants and expresses regret.

Context

What the record shows

The Emergency of 1952–60 produced a network of detention camps whose interrogation practices Britain documented and then tried to destroy; the surviving files, found in 2011, led to the 2013 settlement.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Kenya?
Britain, from the protectorate of 1895 to independence in 1963.
What was the Mau Mau uprising?
An armed revolt, mainly Kikuyu, against land alienation and colonial rule between 1952 and 1960, met with a state of emergency, mass detention and systematic abuse in camps.
When did Kenya gain independence?
12 December 1963.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Kenya

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.