Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:38:51.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Origins of the Kikuyu Land Problem: Land Alienation and Land Use in Kiambu, Kenya, 1895-1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

John Overton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Land and land shortage lie at the center of Kenyan political history throughout the colonial period and beyond. Land alienation created a keen sense of loss among Africans and attempts by the colonial government to assuage this, such as the Kenya Land Commission of the 1930s, did little to meet the problem of growing African land shortage. The land problem was most strongly felt and expressed by many Kikuyu, especially in the south.

There were many issues relating to land alienation and resulting shortage: legal definitions, questions of occupancy, political constraints, and moral concerns. The origins of the Kikuyu land problem need further investigation, however, for they lie not simply in a blatant and bloody land grab, nor in the possession of vacant land by settlers and the colonial state. Rather, there was a complex mesh of haphazard appropriation, bureaucratic chaos, fitful economic growth (by settlers and Africans), economic co-operation and conflict, and frontier readjustment. This paper examines the dynamics of land alienation, land use and mounting land shortage in the Kiambu District of Kenya during the first twenty-five years of colonial rule.

Kiambu was, and is, an area of transition (Figure 1). In an environmental sense it lies between the cool, fertile, densely populated and, formerly, thickly forested Kikuyu Uplands and the lower, warmer grassland of the south and east. Before 1900, the area also marked a fluid boundary between the pastoral Maasai and the predominantly agriculturalist Kikuyu. There was no firm frontier: trade in stock, grain and brides was important to both and their spheres of settlement and economic activity not only met but overlapped.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , September 1988 , pp. 109 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, David M. 1982. Herder, Settler and Colonial Rule: a History of the Peoples of the Baringo Plains, Kenya, circa. 1890 to 1940. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Trinity College, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Anderson, David M. and Johnson, Douglas H. 1988. “Introduction: Ecology and Society in Northeast African History”, pp.1–24 in Johnson, Douglas H. and Anderson, David M. (eds.) The Ecology of Survival. Lester Crook, London and Westview, Boulder Col.Google Scholar
Austen, R.A. 1971. “Patterns of Development in Nineteenth Century East Africa”, African Historical Studies 4(3): 645–57.Google Scholar
Clayton, A. and Savage, D.C. 1974. Government and Labour in Kenya 1895-1963. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Dawson, W.J. 1912. “The Importance of Plant Introduction with Special Reference to the Highlands”, (East African) Agricultural Journal 4(2): 137–48.Google Scholar
East Africa Protectorate. 1900–1920. Quarterly and Annual Reports for Ukamba Province, Kiambu District, Kikuyu District, Nairobi District and Dagoretti Sub-District. Also miscellaneous Political Record Books, Handing Over Reports and Files (DC/MKS series—District Commissioner's Office, Machakos). Kenya National Archives, Nairobi.Google Scholar
East Africa Protectorate. 1905. Report of the Land Committee. Nairobi: Government Printer.Google Scholar
East Africa Protectorate. 1908 and 1913. Blue Book of Statistics (1907-08 and 1912-1913). Nairobi: Government Printer.Google Scholar
East Africa Protectorate. 1909. Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1908-09. Nairobi: Government Printer.Google Scholar
East Africa Protectorate. 1913. Native Labour Commission – Evidence and Report 1912-13. Nairobi: Government Printer.Google Scholar
Great Britain. 1895–1920. Colonial records. FO 107 series: Foreign Office, Zanzibar: Drafts, despatches and telegrams (1895-1905); CO 533 series: Colonial Office, Kenya: Original correspondence (1905-). Held at the Public Records Office, London.Google Scholar
Great Britain. 1933. Report of the Kenya Land Commission. Great Britain Parliamentary Paper, Cmnd 4580. Also Kenya Land Commission: Evidence and Memoranda 3 Vols. Colonial Paper no.91 (1934).Google Scholar
Kanogo, Tabitha. 1987. Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau. London: James Currey; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press; and Nairobi: Nairobi.Google Scholar
Kenya Farm Survey Records (K.F.S.R.). These are records of all cadastral surveys of farms in the Highlands between 1900-1920 (K.F.S.R./1) and a set of cadastral maps (K.F.S.R./2). They are held by the author.Google Scholar
Kitching, Gavin N. 1980. Class and Economic Change in Kenya: the Making of an African Petite-bourgeoisie. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kitching, Gavin N. 1981. Land, Livestock and Leadership. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, John. 1988. “Kikuyu Political Thought and Historical Process” Seminar paper presented at School of Oriental and African Studies, London, January 1988.Google Scholar
Middleton, J. 1965. “Kenya: Changes in African life, 1912-1945”, pp. 333–94 in Harlow, V., Chilver, E.M. and Smith, Anne (eds.) History of East Africa Vol.2. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mosley, Paul. 1983. The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muriuki, G. 1974. A History of the Kikuyu 1500-1900. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Muriuki, G. 1976. “The Kikuyu in the pre-colonial period”, pp. 106–38 in Ogot, B.A. (ed.) Kenya Before 1900. Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House.Google Scholar
Murray, Nancy U. 1982. “The Other Lost Lands: the Forest Department in Colonial Kenya”, Kenyatta University College, Department of History, Staff Seminar Paper.Google Scholar
Overton, John D. 1983. Spatial Differentiation in the Colonial Economy of Kenya: Africans, Settlers and the State 1900-1920. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Trinity College, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Overton, John D. 1986. “War and Economic Development: Settlers in Kenya 1914-1918”, Journal of African History 27(1): 79–103.Google Scholar
Powell, H. 1908. “Coffee”, (East African) Agricultural Journal 1(2): 132–42.Google Scholar
Remole, R.A. 1959. White Settlers or the Foundation of Agricultural Settlement in Kenya. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of History, Harvard.Google Scholar
Rogers, P. 1979. “The British and the Kikuyu 1890-1905: a Re-assessment”, Journal of African History 20(2): 255–70.Google Scholar
Savage, D.C. and Munro, J. Forbes. 1966. “Carrier Corps recruitment in the British East Africa Protectorate, 1914-1918”, Journal of African History 7(2): 313–42.Google Scholar
Sorrenson, M.P.K. 1968. Origins of European Settlement in Kenya. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, Ian R.G. 1983. “Pastoralism and Colonial Policy in Kenya, 1895-1929”, pp. 113–140 in Rotberg, R.I. (ed.) Imperialism, Colonialism and Hunger: East and Central Africa. Lexington: D.C. Heath.Google Scholar
Stichter, Sharon. 1982. Migrant Labor in Kenya: Capitalism and African Response. Harlow (Great Britain): Longman.Google Scholar
Tate, H.R. 1909. “Native Tenants on European Farms”, (East African) Agricultural Journal 1(4): 360–2.Google Scholar
Waller, Richard. 1988. “Emutai: Crisis and Response in Maasailand 1883-1902”, pp. 73–112 in Johnson, Douglas H. and Anderson, David M. (eds.) The Ecology of Survival. Lester Crook, London and Westview, Boulder, Col.Google Scholar
Wrigley, C.C. 1965. “Kenya: the Patterns of Economic Life, 1902-1945”, pp. 209–64 in Harlow, V., Chilver, E.M. and Smith, Anne (eds.) History of East Africa Vol. 2. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar