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War and Economic Development: Settlers in Kenya, 1914–1918*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

John Overto
John Overto
Affiliation:
University of the South Pacific
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Extract

The First World War is perhaps the least studied period in the historiography of European settlement in Kenya. This paper reverses the previously held view of settler economic decline and disarray. Despite apparent problems of shipping shortages, closure of markets and loss of white manpower, settler products were grown and exported in ever-increasing quantities during the war years. The grain and livestock industries were stimulated by new wartime markets whilst plantation crops, chiefly sisal and coffee, continued the impetus of pre-war activity and substantial new planting took place. Prosperity and development, not reversal and decline, were the keynotes of the settler wartime economy. With this new evidence and understanding, it is possible to re-interpret much of the early history of colonial Kenya. The fundamental vulnerability and stuttering growth of white settlement before 1914 gave way to the gradual assertion of the settler economy over the African, with state support, during and after the war. But this assertion and growth was founded upon abnormal economic circumstances: on cheap and available labour, insatiable markets and a pre-occupied colonial state. The post-war crises of labour and market contraction, and the pre-eminence of the settler sector after 1920, therefore must be traced to this accelerated and artificial growth in the settler economy in 1914–18.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 79 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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17 Fountain to Long, 26 April 1917, CO 533/188.

18 Fountain to Long, 29 June 1917, CO 533/188. This 3,000 ton figure in fact substantially exceeded the total Protectorate coffee exports of only 828 tons in 1916–17.

19 Bowring to Long, 26 June 1917; A. C. MacDonald, ‘Memo on coffee advances’, 19 June 1917, CO 533/182; Monson to Long, 1 Feb. 1918, Monson to Hon. Sec. Coffee Planters Union, 23 Nov. 1917, CO 533/193. MacLellan Wilson was one of the first beneficiaries of the scheme.

20 Report on Trade Conditions in British East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar, (Cape Town, 1919), 17.

21 Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1917–18. The value of imports of agri-cultural implements, machinery and vehicles fell from a pre-war peak in 1913–14 of £91,424 to £42,328 in 1914–15, £31,428 in 1915–16, £59,700 in 1916–17 and £56,842 in 1917–18: Blue Books, 1913–14 to 1915–16, Trade Report of the Customs Department, 1916–17 and 1917–18. Import statistics give reliable information on value, not quantity, so the effect of wartime inflation is not clear. Also the amalgamation of the E.A.P. and Uganda Customs Department in 1917 complicates the picture for 1917–18.

22 Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1916–17. It was also possible to import machinery for the establishment of the new flax industry.

23 Newland, Tarltons Monthly, December 1915, stated that most export crops remained ‘highly profitable’ and that the position of agriculture was ‘as sound as ever before’ (p. I).

24 Ukamba Province Annual Report, 1915–16, Nakuru District Annual Report, 1915–16, K.N.A.; Bowring to Bonar Law, 15 Feb. 1916, CO 533/167; Belfield to Long, 6 Feb. 1917, CO 533/178; Belfield to Long, 15 March 1917, Long to Belfield, 17 March 1917, CO 533/179.

25 Acting Governor Bowring in 1919 estimated local European recruitment at 1,987. Allowing for railway and official staff, missionaries, ‘aliens’, over-age and unfit men (together totalling 1,291 in 1916) this accounts for all of the pre-war male population of 3,145. Bowring to Long, 13 Jan. 1919, CO 533/206; Bowring to Monson, 31 Dec. 1919, CO 533/216; Bowring to Bonar Law, 15 Feb. 1916, CO 533/167.

26 Machakos District Annual Report, 1915–16; Uasin Gishu District Annual Report, 1914–15; Nakuru District Annual Report, 1914–15 and 1915–16; Naivasha District Annual Report, 1915–16, K.N.A.

27 Ukamba Province Annual Report, 1915–16, K.N.A.

28 Belfield to Long, 6 Feb. 1917, CO 533/178.

29 Read to Secretary, War Office, 14 Feb. 1917, CO 533/178.

30 Nakuru District Annual Report, 1915–16, K.N.A.

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38 Kiambu District Annual Report, 1916–17, Uasin Gishu District Annual Report, 1915–16, K.N.A.; Annual Report of the Coffee Plant Inspector in Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1915–16, 59.

39 See sources cited in n.I. Hodges suggests a figure of 200,000 troops, carriers and followers recruited from the East Africa Protectorate (G. W. T. Hodges, ‘African manpower statistics’, 116).

40 Kikuyu District Annual Report, 1917–18; Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–17; Dagoretti Sub-District Annual Report, 1917–18; Dagoretti Political Record Book, 16 April 1917, K.N.A.

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45 See, for example, Ukamba Province Annual Report, 1916–17; Naivasha District Annual Report, 1917–18, K.N.A.; Newland, Tarltons Monthly, November 1916, for wages of Rs. 5 and Rs. 6 per month at Rongai.

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54 Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–17, K.N.A. The evidence for squatter production is some what fragmentary though it is certain that squatter grain production was being extended and settlers were involved in its marketing.

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58 Railway traffic data also support this view of increased output. Railings of coffee from Ukamba and Nyanza Provinces (covering all the main settler outlets) increased from around 600 tons in 1913–14 to 750 tons in 1915–16 and to over 3,000 tons in 1917–18: East Africa Protectorate, Railway Administration Reports, 1913–14 to 1917–18.

59 Barth to Long, 26 Sept. 1918, MacDonald report on flax, 26 Aug. 1918, CO 533/197.

60 Barth to Long, 26 Sept. 1918, MacDonald report on flax, 26 Aug. 1918, CO 533/197; Leggett to Hewins, 10 April 1918, CO 533/204; Dagoretti Sub-District Annual Report, 1917–18, K.N.A.

61 Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1917–18.

62 Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1913–14.

63 The Agricultural Census of 1920 returned 14,005 acres of sisal three years old or more, i.e. planted before June 1917: Report on the Agricultural Census of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, 1920 (Nairobi, 1921).

64 Kenia Province Annual Reports, 1916–17 and 1917–18, K.N.A.

65 Kenia Province Annual Reports, 1915–16 and 1916–17, K.N.A.

66 Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1917–18; Machakos District Annual Reports, 1915–16 to 1917–18, Kiambu District Annual Report, 1916–17, K.N.A. The estimate of 25,000 acres is probably too high.

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69 Ukamba Province Annual Reports, 1914–15 to 1917–18, Kenia Province Annual Reports, 1916–17 and 1917–18, K.N.A. Acres under coffee in Kiambu were estimated as follows: July 1914, 5,150 acres; July 1915, 9,267 acres; July 1916, 11,616 acres; March 1918, 13,752 acres.

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76 For example, Eldama Ravine District Annual Report, 1919–20, detailed several large herds in existence at the end of the war and Naivasha District Annual Reports of 1914–15 to 1917–18 estimated a doubling of cattle numbers on settler land over a five year period to 1918. In addition, 191 new cattle brands were registered during the war, an increase of 38 per cent over pre-war brand numbers. Department of Agriculture Annual Reports, 1913–14 to 1917–18.

77 Nakuru District Annual Reports, 1915–16 and 1918–19, K.N.A. The latter report noted that some settlers ‘exploited their native squatters with success’. This ‘exploitation’ could have taken the form of cheap purchase of stock for resale or breeding or could have referred to grain purchases.

78 Blue Book, 1912–13 to 1915–16. For comments on the bacon industry see Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1916–17.

79 Department of Agriculture Annual Report, 1916–17.

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82 Nakuru District Annual Report, 1915–16, K.N.A.

83 Ukamba Province Annual Report, 1917–18, K.N.A.

84 Uasin Gishu District Annual Reports, 1914–15 to 1917–18, K.N.A.

85 ‘Correspondence with the government of Kenya relating to Lord Delamere's acquisition of land in Kenya’, Great Britain, Parliamentary Paper, Cmd. 2629, 1929.

86 Newland, Tarltons Monthly, November 1915 to May 1916.

87 Ibid., April 1916, July 1916, October 1916, June/July 1917.

88 Kenya Farm Survey Records (K.F.S.R./I) held by author. These data were extracted from records of the Survey Department Nairobi and, along with a collection of cadastral maps (K.F.S.R./2), comprise an invaluable data source for early land-holding in Kenya.

89 K.F.S.R./I; Overton, , ‘Spatial differentiation’, 266.Google Scholar

90 Overton, , ‘Spatial differentiation’, chapter 7 for a discussion of the wartime African economies. See also Kitching, Land, Livestock and Leadership, 48–53,Google Scholar and Waller, , ‘Uneconomic growth’, 9–13.Google Scholar