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7 - Kenya, 1905–1934

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Martin J. Wiener
Affiliation:
Rice University, Houston
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Summary

It will be an ill day for these native races when their fortunes are removed from the impartial and august administration of the Crown and abandoned to the fierce self-interest of a small white population.

Winston Churchill, My African Journey (1908)

On a June day in 1923, a substantial Kenya farmer, Jasper Abraham, son of the Bishop of Norwich, ordered an African employee named Kitosh to deliver to the farm a horse that had been left at a railway station. When Abraham was told that the employee had been seen riding the horse, rather than walking it as he had been told to do, he flew into a tirade, demanding over and over again to know why the “boy” had defied his instructions and ridden it. The African finally replied that he was not a thief. Taken aback by this “insolent” answer, Abraham flogged him with an ox rein for fifteen minutes, then, tiring, ordered other African employees to continue the flogging, finishing off after a few more minutes by personally delivering a kick to the head. He then had him tied to a post in the storeroom for the night. By morning the man was dead. He died, as Dane Kennedy has astutely observed, “because he had ridden the European's horse.”

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Chapter
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An Empire on Trial
Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870–1935
, pp. 193 - 221
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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  • Kenya, 1905–1934
  • Martin J. Wiener, Rice University, Houston
  • Book: An Empire on Trial
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800665.010
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  • Kenya, 1905–1934
  • Martin J. Wiener, Rice University, Houston
  • Book: An Empire on Trial
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800665.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Kenya, 1905–1934
  • Martin J. Wiener, Rice University, Houston
  • Book: An Empire on Trial
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511800665.010
Available formats
×