For more than fifty years Ewart Scott Grogan (1874–1967) was one of Kenya's most influential and controversial European settlers. Among other things, he helped to develop the port of Mombasa, to finance the country's forestry industry, and to experiment with new agricultural and water conservation techniques. Grogan also repeatedly fought against the British colonial government in defense of Kenya's European community; indeed, many settlers considered him to be a greater leader than Lord Delamere.

Apart from his economic, scientific, and political talents, Grogan was a gifted and prolific writer. His first literary achievement, From the Cape to Cairo, published in 1900, not only chronicled the events of a harrowing two year walking tour of Africa, but also discussed many of the problems that confronted the continent at the dawn of the twentieth century. In the book's final chapter, for example, Grogan listed a series of recommendations for the construction of a Cape-to-Cairo telegraph and railway system. He then examined the “native question,” the need for a compulsory labor program for Africans, and the benefits of an indirect form of colonial rule.

In 1909 Grogan wrote an analytical treatise called The Economic Calculus and Its Application to Tariff. In general terms the book sought to demonstrate that “there is a growing feeling that the classical system of economics has failed to justify its claim for recognition in the domain of science.” More specifically, it outlined England's policy toward free trade, umemployment, and protection of workers' rights. According to Leda Farrant, Grogan's latest biographer, the book “was recognized by the experts of the period as a valuable addition to the study of economics and is still used today as a reference book in the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London University and many other universities and libraries throughout England.”