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Abstract
This article explains the cultural construction of Kenya Colony. It does so by combining two related histories – those of international tourism and of colonial rule – and two key explanatory themes – those of crisis and of commodity. The cultural construction of the colony, the article argues, emerged from two decisive moments: the “Indian crisis” of the early 1920s and the Mau Mau Emergency of the 1950s. Its content, meanwhile, was determined by its creation as a product, to be constituted, marketed, purchased and consumed. Colonial decline coincided with the emergence of Kenya Colony as global brand. Whilst the political project to maintain white man's country failed, the commercial project – to market white man's country as a commodity – succeeded emphatically. Attending to political crisis and cultural construction together, moreover, illustrates the function of the Kenya myth. The myth of Kenya Colony, the article argues, operated through recursive tropes of the picturesque, the transcendent and the primeval that are manifest not only in the writings of colonials themselves but also in accounts of Kenya produced in the period after independence. By examining the post-colonial period alongside the formative years of colonial rule, the extent to which ideas about Kenya circulating in the world today should be thought of in neo-colonial terms becomes apparent.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Nalini Mohabir for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. All errors of fact and judgement remain my own.
Notes
1. Tidrick, English Character, 131.
2. Kennedy, Islands of White, 92.
3. Duder, “Men of the Officer Class”; Kennedy, Islands of White, 44–45.
4. Legislation promulgated in 1906 demanded that all settlers without guarantors already established in the colony deposit £50 with customs on arrival, intending to preclude the entry of those likely to fall on hard times whilst insuring against the costs of repatriation were any to do so. When the soldier-settler scheme was inaugurated at the end of the First World War, applicants were required to demonstrate that they possessed at least £1,000 in capital or a regular income of £200 a year. Kennedy, Islands of White, 43; Duder, “Men of the Officer Class,” 72.
5. Duder, “Men of the Officer Class,” 71; Kennedy, Islands of White, 167–86; Tidrick, English Character, 134; Lonsdale, “Home County,” 87. On poor whites elsewhere in the European empires, see Arnold, “European Orphans”; Fischer-Tiné, Low and Licentious Europeans; Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories”; Morrell, “White But Poor”; Saunders, “History of White Poverty”; Cairnie, Imperialists in Broken Boots.
6. Huxley, Nine Faces of Kenya, 104. As Michael Redley has shown, immigrants to Kenya after the First World War were as likely to come from manufacturing, commercial or professional backgrounds as they were from the landed gentry. Redley, “Predicament,” 9.
7. Other literary-inflected accounts of colonial Kenya include: Duder, “Love and the Lions”; Lassner, Colonial Strangers, 17–69; Whitlock, Intimate Empire, 112–41; Knipp, “Kenya's Literary Ladies.”
8. For an overview of the “new imperial history,” see Howe, New Imperial Histories Reader.
9. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged; Elkins, Britain's Gulag.
10. On Europeans in colonial Kenya, see Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement; Redley, “Predicament”; Kennedy, Islands of White; Duder, “Men of the Officer Class”; Duder and Youé, “Race and Politics”; Lonsdale, “Home County.”
11. Urry, “Consumption of Tourism,” 26; Frow, Time and Commodity Culture, 66.
12. Lonsdale, “Home County,” 75; Duder, “Love and the Lions,” 427.
13. Bennett, “British Settlers,” 58.
14. Lonsdale, “Home County,” 78.
15. Carson, Sun, Sand and Safari; Dundas, African Crossroads; Farson, Last Chance; Gatti, Africa is Adventure; Gregory, Under the Sun; Hunter, Hunter; Huxley, Flame Trees; Huxley, Mottled Lizard; Lander, My Kenya Acres; Lipscomb, We Built a Country; Lipscomb, White Africans; Mitchell, African Afterthoughts; Roosevelt, A Sentimental Safari; Seaton, Lion in the Morning; Stapleton, Gate Hangs Well; Whittall, Dimbilil.
16. Eliot, East Africa Protectorate, 216–17.
17. Duder, “Men of the Officer Class,” 70. Dane Kennedy describes the scheme as “the single most significant event in the shaping of [Kenya's] white settler community.” Kennedy, Islands of White, 53.
18. Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, 112.
19. For the court proceedings of these cases see the East African Standard for September 1918, June to September 1920 and June to August 1923. Numerous letters were published in the British press during this period, questions were asked in the Commons and the Colonial Secretary was petitioned repeatedly by the Anti-Slavery Society's executive committee. See Anti-Slavery Society papers, Rhodes House (hereafter RH): Mss.Brit.Emp.s.22/G.136 to G.145. Reference to these incidents can also be found in Ross, Kenya From Within, 14; and Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, 118.
20. Bennett, “Settlers and Politics,” 271, 298.
21. Kennedy, Islands of White, 50, 58.
22. In 1921 the number of Europeans was 9,651 to 22,822 Indians. See Census Office, Report on the Census.
23. Huxley, White Man's Country, II, 116.
24. For a comprehensive account of this crisis, see Huxley, White Man's Country, II, 110–40; Dilley, British Policy, 141–78; Maxon, Struggle for Kenya, 160–279; Youé, “Settler Rebellion,” 347–60; Lonsdale, “Home County,” 95.
25. For the full account of settlers’ preparedness to resort to violence see Duder, “Settler Response.”
26. Lonsdale, “Home County,” 95–6.
27. Cited in Huxley, White Man's Country, II, 114.
28. Editorial, East African Standard, June 20, 1923.
29. Huxley, White Man's Country, I, 64.
30. Bache, The Youngest Lion, 65.
31. Editorial, East African Standard, February 1, 1923.
32. Huxley, White Man's Country, II, 44. See also “Lord Cranworth to The Editor,” The Times, January 23, 1923; Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 440.
33. As Lonsdale has written, the least noticed yet most important effect of the crisis was the settlers’ realisation that to receive imperial recognition they must portray themselves as co-trustees of the African future and to deny that role to Indians. Lonsdale, “Britannia's Mau Mau,” 273–74.
34. Examples include: Boyes, Company of Adventurers; Bromhead, What's What; Buxton, Kenya Days; Carnegie, Kenyan Farm Diary; Cranworth, Kenya Chronicles; de Janzé, Vertical Land; de Watteville, Out in the Blue; Norden, White and Black; Powys, Ebony and Ivory; Powys, Black Laughter. On fiction during the inter-war years, see Duder, “‘Love and the Lions’”; on the “champagne safari,” see Steinhart, Black Poachers, 119–22.
35. Between 1939 and 1959 the European population in Kenya almost tripled - from an estimated total of 21,000 in 1939 to a total of 60,000 in 1960. Jackson, “Poor Men,” 9.
36. My coupling together of profit and sport is taken from Lord Cranworth's memoir, Profit and Sport in East Africa.
37. Thomas Cook, Traveller's Gazette, December 10, 1903. On Thomas Cook and the British Empire, see Teo, “Wandering in the Wake,” 165; Hazbun, “East as an Exhibit.”
38. Brendon, Thomas Cook, 252–54.
39. Nash, Wilderness, 343–54.
40. Mackenzie, Empire of Nature, 161; Steinhart, Black Poachers, 117.
41. Foran, Cuckoo in Kenya, 87.
42. See also Mackenzie, “Ritualised Killing,” 147–66.
43. Steinhart, Black Poachers, 92.
44. To Steinhart, it was precisely the fact that the safari developed from a hunting expedition to “travel for the sake of travel” with the hunting itself punctuated by dinners, dances and various other social events that established the Kenya safari's particular appeal. Steinhart identifies the famous Prince of Wales safari in 1928 as the key event in developing this appeal. On “dinner in the bush” see Callaway, “Dinner in the Bush,” 232–47.
45. Kennedy, Islands of White, 184.
46. Dundas, African Crossroads, p. 58.
47. Gunter, Inside Africa, 318. For other intimations of the cult of unconventionality that Kenya afforded, see de Janzé, Vertical Land, 35; Strange, Kenya Today, 14; Carnegie, Red Dust, 220; Seaton, Lion in the Morning, 20; Scott, Nice Place to Live, 47, 155.
48. Norden, White and Black, 62. For descriptions of European women at Nairobi's hotels, see Lady Moore's diaries, RH: Mss Brit Emp.s.466 (3), 17; Strange, Kenya Today, 39–40; Foran, Kenya Police, 55.
49. Cole, Random Recollections.
50. Thomas Cook, Travel in East Africa, 1936.
51. Tourist Travel Committee, Playground of Africa, 23.
52. Margaret Gillon, “The Wagon and the Star,” unpublished manuscript, RH: Mss.Afr.s.568, 28. For a similar account of Nairobi see Strange, Kenya Today, 38.
53. Notably Gillon was not a tourist herself (though passages of her book feel unmistakably like a tourist guide), but a nursing sister and a member of the colonial service.
54. E.F. Kennedy, “Life was Seldom Dull: The Experiences of a Woman in Equatorial Africa,” unpublished manuscript, RH: Mss.Afr.s.514, 328. See also Hamlyn Memoirs, RH: Mss.Afr.1757, 38.
55. From an estimated total of 21,000 in 1939 to a total of 60,000 in 1960.
56. “Memorandum and Articles of Association of the Kenya Association,” August 31, 1932, RH: Mss.Afr.s.595.
57. See RH: Mss. Afr.s.595, File 2 for enquiries submitted to the Kenya Association relating to settlement in the colony. See also Kennedy, Islands of White, 83–4.
58. Gadsden, “Wartime Propaganda”; Smyth, “Genesis of Public Relations”; Morris, “Britain's New Empire.”
59. Kenya Information Office, 77 Questions Answered. Other notable publications during this period include Kenya Central Office of Information, Kenya: A Story of Progress; European Agricultural Settlement Board, Kenya: A Farmer's Country; and Kenya Central Office of Information, Kenya. Over 20,000 copies of Kenya: A Story of Progress were distributed around the world throughout the later 1950s. (A quarter of those printed were distributed by the East Africa Tourist Travel Association; through the Department of Information, the government agreed to put up £2,000 to cover the costs). Kenya National Archives (hereafter KNA): AE/32/10, Information Liaison Committee.
60. KNA: AE/31/1, Formation of the East Africa Tourist Travel Association (EATTA).
61. Neumann, “Post-war Conservation Boom”; Beinart and Hughes, Environment and Empire, 289–309; Akama, “Evolution of Tourism,” 12.
62. Ouma, Tourism in East Africa, 15.
63. KNA: AE/32/4, “Branch Manager's Annual Report for May 1950-December 1951.” EATTA publications included: Nairobi: A Visitor's Guide (1952); Visit East Africa (1955); The Hotels, Safari Lodges and Restaurants of East Africa (1956); Stronghold of the Wild: On the National Parks of East Africa (1957); A Guide to Mombasa and the Coast (1957); Exploring East Africa, (1958); and Kenya Safari (1961).
64. East Africa Office, Sport in Kenya.
65. East African Standard, Most Attractive Colony, 33.
66. Ouma, Tourism in East Africa, 18.
67. Kenya: Britain's Most Attractive Colony, 89.
68. Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, 121.
69. See for example: European Settlement Board, To Farm in Kenya; and Kenya Central Office of Information, African Advancement.
70. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, 144; Kennedy, Myth of Mau Mau, 256.
71. Evans, Law and Disorder, 164.
72. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, 128–68.
73. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, 147.
74. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, 165–166.
75. KNA: AE/32/10, Information Liaison Committee Meeting, March 15, 1955.
76. Kenya Department of Information Annual Report, 1955.
77. KNA: AE/32/10, A. Matheson, “Channels for Overseas Publicity on Kenya,” October 9, 1954.
78. Said, Culture and Imperialism, xii.
79. On claims to be the first European to behold a particular landscape, for example, see Hunter, Hunter, 11; Raymond Mitford Barberton, The Quest for the Loonburg Duiker, RH: Mss.Afr.s.1166, ii, 13; Hammond and Jablow, Africa That Never Was, 17.
80. Thus we read in Genesta Hamilton's memoirs that the gorge she saw on safari at Kijabe was “a real Rider Haggard scene” and in J.A. Hunter's memoir that in Kenya he would spend his evenings reading the works of Selous, Baker, Stanley and Speke and liked to feel that “in a modest way I was following in the footsteps of these great men.” Hamilton, A Stone's Throw, 66; Hunter, Hunter, 101–2.
81. Blundell, Love Affair With the Sun, 10.
82. Lipscomb, White Africans, 32.
83. T. Farnworth Anderson, “Reminiscences,” RH: Mss.Afr.s.1653, 34.
84. Foran, A Cuckoo in Kenya, 66–7.
85. Waugh, Remote People, 182.
86. Lewis, “Culture, Cultivation and Colonialism.”
87. See Roland Barthes’ notion of myth as depoliticised ‘Speech’ in Barthes, Mythologies, 143.
88. Ash and Turner, Golden Hordes, 165, 171; Krippendorf, Holiday Makers, 56; Nash, “Tourism”; Gilbert, “Ecotourism.”
89. Akama, “Neocolonialism,” 146, 150; Ash and Turner, Golden Hordes, 175; Teo, “Wandering in the Wake,” 166–67; Sindiga, Tourism and African Development, 164.
90. Mosley, Settler Economies, 234–35.
91. Whitlock, “‘The Animals are Innocent,’” 242; Neumann, “Post-war Conservation Boom,” 23.
92. Akama, “Evolution of Tourism,” 14
93. Akama, “Evolution of Tourism,” 15.
94. Kenya Tourism Statistics, Experience Kenya Communications Ltd: http://www.experiencekenya.co.ke
95. Peleggi, “Consuming Colonial Nostalgia.”
96. MacCannell, “Staged Authenticity.”
97. Whitlock, “The Animals are Innocent,” 236.
98. Apart from Finch-Hattons and Karen Blixen Camp other notable examples include The Norfolk, The Stanley, The Muthaiga Country Club and numerous safari lodges across Kenya's national parks and on private conservation areas.
99. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge, 14.
102. Peliggi, “Consuming Colonial Nostalgia,” 261.
103. Peliggi, “Consuming Colonial Nostalgia,” 262.
104. Urry, “Consumption of Tourism,” 26.
105. These include: Nicholls, Red Strangers; Wheeler, Too Close to the Sun; Paice, Lost Lion of Empire; Lovell, Straight on till Morning; Osborne, The Bolter; Spicer, The Temptress; Trzebinski, Life and Death; Huxley, Flame Trees.
106. Wheeler, Too Close to the Sun, 1–2.
107. Wheeler, Too Close to the Sun, 2–3
108. Wheeler, Too Close to the Sun, 4–5
109. Blixen, Out of Africa, 167.
110. Anderson and Grove, Conservation in Africa, 4–5; Akama, ‘Neocolonialism’, 145.
111. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 201–3.
112. Blixen, Out of Africa, 167
113. See http://www.aeroclubea.com; Markham, West with the Night.
114. Blixen, Out of Africa, 151.
115. Peliggi, “Consuming Colonialist Nostalgia,” 260; Akama, “Neocolonialism,” 145.
116. Monbiot, No Man's Land, 88
117. Akama, “Neocolonialism,” 147.
118. Sindiga, Tourism and African Development, 164.
119. On the vicarious experience of empire encountered through popular culture and advertising see Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire; Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders.
121. See Neumann, Imposing Wilderness; Brockington, Fortress Conservation; and Duffy, Killing for Conservation, for studies on Tanzania and Zimbabwe. A scholarly social history of conservation, tourism and safari in Kenya after independence awaits its historian.
122. Gill, “The History of Safari,” The Sunday Times, May 2, 2010.
123. See Gallman, I Dreamed of Africa; Atwood, Jambo Mama; Illumberg, Tea on the Blue Sofa; Hoffman, I Married a Masai; Hoffman, Back from Africa; Hoffman, Reunion in Barsaloi.