Abdullahi Sara. Kenya at a Crossroads

The colonial history of Kenya revolved around three main issues: land, labor, and race. During his governorship, Sir Charles Eliot inaugurated the policy of alienating land for white settlers. His rationalization was that the produce from their farms could be exported by rail, making the railway profitable and thereby enhancing the colony’s economic and social development. The initial settlers arrived from South Africa, a country with a long history of racial discrimination, alienation of African land, and also exploitation of African labor, now codified into law. There was never any consideration given to entrusting the Africans, the owners of the land, with the task of commercial farming. By the time that Sir Percy Girouard arrived as the new governor in 1909, therefore, the main outlines of the settler colonial state were already established. In Kenya at a Crossroads: Administration and Economy under Sir Percy Girouard, 1909–1912, Abdullahi Sara deals with the contested dynamics of settler colonialism in Kenya at a time when its boundaries were still fluid. Although Sir Percy had only a three-year tenure as governor of Kenya, Sara argues that these were three critical years, constituting a “crossroads” in Kenya’s colonial administration and history (7–8), and that Sir Percy failed as governor through his inefficiency, his lack of connection with the colonial subjects, and his troubled relationship with the Colonial Office in London. Sara also states that Sir Percy made the wrong choice by preferring white settlers over African peasant producers at a time when “the basis of the protectorate’s economic future had yet to be decided” (7). In the author’s view, Sir Percy should be regarded not as a successful colonial administrator, but rather as a failure: deceptive, unimaginative, insubordinate, disloyal to the Colonial Office, and of course racist.

Administration (probate law) · Alienation · Colonialism · Economic history · Governor · Peasant · Political science · Sociology · White (mutation) · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law