Massacre at Ribo Post

The colonial conquest of East Africa was a protracted and haphazard business spanning decades, first begun in the early 1890s but not completed until 1919. As the frontier of colonial conquest advanced, there were many episodes of Africa resistance but also many examples of capitulation and collaboration.1 The best survey of this complex period of colonial conquest in East Africa is surely to be found in John Lonsdale's two essays on the subject, the first dealing with the British East African Protectorate between 1895 and 1905, the second focusing more specifically upon events in Western Kenya between 1894 and 1908.2 At the level of the Protectorate, Lonsdale identifies three distinct in the conquest of territory. The first of these saw Britain dominate the coast through the influence of the sultan of Zanzibar, with penetration inland being carried out by the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC). In the second phase, from 1895 to 1901, with the declaration of protectorates over Uganda and East Africa (Kenya), British interests rallied to protect the road to Uganda and to construct a railway linking the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria (Nyanza). In the third phase, commencing with the railway's completion in 1901, colonial control was finally extended over a broader front, with episodes of violence alongside economic incorporation and political accommodation. Narrowing his focus to Western Kenya and the conquest of the many Luyia, Luo, and Gusii polities in this region, Lonsdale offers a more detailed and subtle examination of the second of these phases. seen from Western Kenya between 1895 and 1901, the process of conquest was uneven and sporadic, violent at times but compliant to local politics at other moments. Lonsdale here discerns five sequential phases in this six-year period: (1) coexistence, from August 1894 to June 1895; (2) ascendancy, from July 1895 to March 1897, driven by enhanced military capacity; (3) coexistence again, from April 1897 to June 1898, a function of limited resources of conquest and the fragility of British authority; (4) domination, from July 1898 to April 1900, the restoration of a firmer colonial authority characterized by a willingness to deploy coercive force and to exploit local political allies; and (5) control, from May 1900 onwards, with the consolidation of colonial military power and the formalization of authority through the co-option of allies within the structures of the colonial regime. The sequence of conquest reveals that the triumph of the colonizer was seldom inevitable, frequently deflected by the limitations of colonial resources, and more often than not driven by the opportunities afforded by the dynamics of local politics. British success was usually dependent upon African allies and confederates. The extension of the colonial frontier in Western Kenya was therefore not a coordinated and orderly advance, but a spasmodic and opportunistic struggle for ascendancy in a political environment that was both obscure and unpredictable. Lonsdale's account of local conquest, like those of Godfrey Muriuki, Peter Rogers, and Richard Waller for other parts of the East African Protectorate, rightly gives prominence to the British concern to protect Sclater's road, and then the Uganda railway.3 Until 1901 there was little attempt to extend colonial authority beyond this limited horizon. One notable exception to this was in the Baringo region of the northern Rift Valley, where between 1899 and 1901 the British made a bold-perhaps even reckless-attempt, to extend colonial authority far to the north of the road and railway that connected Mombasa to the great lake. The advance into Baringo was prompted by the desire to control the rich ivory trade of the northern regions, in the hope that this would bring much-needed revenue to the coffers of the colonial administration.4 The difficulty of this task was seriously underestimated. Since the British were only dimly aware of the workings of the ivory trade, without any established base of support among local Kalenjin-speaking peoples who dominated the region, and completely dependent for supply and military support upon small pockets of Maa-speaking allies, this imperial venture proved to be premature

Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · Ethnology · Frontier · Geography · Political science · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History

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