¹ Lonsdale, John, “Kenya: Home Country and African Frontier,” in Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas, ed. Robert Bickers (Oxford, 2010), 74–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 75. See also Best, Nicholas, Happy Valley: The Story of the English in Kenya (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Dinesen, Isak, Out of Africa (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Fox, James, White Mischief (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Huxley, Elspeth, The Flame Trees of Thika (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Markham, Beryl, West With the Night (San Francisco, 1983)Google Scholar; and Trzebinski, Errol, The Kenya Pioneers (New York, 1985)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the colonial image of Kenya, its creation and implications, see Jackson, Will, “White Man's Country: Kenya Colony and the Making of a Myth,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 5, no. 2 (May 2011): 344–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² “The Memoirs of William McGregor Ross and Isabel Ross,” MSS. Afr. s. 2305 2/48, Rhodes House Library (RH), Oxford. Ross was born Isabel Abraham in 1885 (d. 1964) to a Quaker family. She graduated with BA in history from Manchester University in 1908, where she founded a university women's suffrage society. In 1916 she married William McGregor Ross (1876–1940), director of Public Works in Kenya.

³ East Africa Women's League: Sixty Years, 1917–1977 (Nairobi, 1977), 2Google Scholar.

⁴ East Africa Women's League Private Collection, WEAL House, Bishop's Road, Nairobi, Kenya. Access to this private archive was granted in 2011 by the generous permission of League members, to whom I am most grateful. The views expressed in this article are my own and the analysis is in no way intended to extend to the present League, its members, or activities.

⁵ Michael Redley, “The Politics of a Predicament: The White Community in Kenya, 1918–32,” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1976). Also, Kennedy, Dane, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, NC, 1987)Google Scholar; Lonsdale, “Kenya”; and Sorrenson, M. P. K., Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

⁶ For the political engagement of white women in Southern Rhodesia, see Law, Kate, “‘Even a Labourer is Worthy of His Hire: How Much More So a Wife?’ Gender and the Contested Nature of Domesticity in Colonial Zimbabwe, c. 1945–1978,” South African Historical Journal 6, no. 3 (August 2011): 456–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lowry, Donal, “‘White Women's Country’: Ethel Tawse Jollie and the Making of White Rhodesia,” Journal of Southern African Studies 23, no. 2 (June 1997): 259–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸ Hall, Catherine, “Women Writing Empire,” Studies in Travel Writing 12, no. 2 (July 2008): 193–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the case of Kenya, John Lonsdale notes, it was primarily settler women who wrote in defense of the community, with their memoirs of pioneer life contributing to the enduring romantic impressions of the colony (Lonsdale, “Kenya,” 78, 89). Also, Duder, C. J. D., “Love and the Lions: The Image of White Settlement in Kenya in Popular Fiction, 1919–1939,” African Affairs 90, no. 360 (July 1991): 427–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Isabel McGregor Ross to the Editor of the EAWL News Bulletin, 14 December 1947, East Africa Women's League (EAWL) Papers, Private Collection, Nairobi (hereafter EAWL Papers).

¹⁰ Benson, W., “Closer Union in Africa,” Journal of the African Society 30, no. 121 (October 1931): 337–43Google Scholar; and Berman, Bruce and Lonsdale, John, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya, (London, 1990), 128–98Google Scholar.

¹¹ Ailsa Turner to the Editor, Cape Times, 23 September 1930, and Ailsa Turner to the Editor, East Africa, 22 September 1930, both EAWL Papers.

¹² The literature on gender and philanthropy in empire is considerable, with much of it focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a starting point see Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994)Google Scholar; Bush, Julia, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London, 2000)Google Scholar; and Midgley, Clare, Feminism and Empire: Women Activists in Imperial Britain, 1790–1865 (London, 2007)Google Scholar. For voluntary work in British Africa, see Karen Tranberg Hansen, “White Women in a Changing World: Employment, Voluntary Work, and Sex in Post-WWII Northern Rhodesia,” in Western Women and Imperialism; and Tripp, Aili Mari, “A New Look at Colonial Women: British Teachers and Activists in Uganda, 1898–1962,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 38, no. 1 (2004): 123–56Google Scholar. As an entrance to the scholarship concerning the broader tensions of liberal imperialism, see Pitts, Jennifer, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Grimshaw, Patricia, Holmes, Katie, and Lake, Marilyn, eds., Women's Rights and Human Rights: International Historical Perspectives (New York, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Carol, “‘Geneva—The Key to Equality’: Inter-War Feminists and the League of Nations,” Women's History Review 3, no. 2 (June 1994): 219–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paisley, Fiona, Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women's Pan-Pacific (Honolulu, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, “Metaphors of the Schoolroom: Women Working in the Mandate System,” History Workshop Journal 66, no. 1 (Autumn 2008): 188–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rupp, Leila, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton, NJ, 1997)Google Scholar; Sinha, Mrinalini, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham, NC, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sinha, Mrinalini, Guy, Donna, and Woollacott, Angela, eds., Feminisms and Internationalism (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ On the contested meanings of trusteeship see Robinson, Ronald, “The Moral Disarmament of African Empire, 1919–1947,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 1 (October 1979): 86–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and for the settler use of this language see Dilley, Marjorie Ruth, British Policy in Kenya Colony (London, 1966), 179–208Google Scholar. For the history of colonial development and welfare policy, see Ashton, S. R. and Stockwell, S. E., eds., “Introduction,” in Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice, 1925–1945 (London, 1996), xxiii–cii;Google ScholarConstantine, Stephen, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 1914–1940 (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Havinden, Michael and Meredith, David, Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960 (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Hodge, Joseph Morgan, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens, OH, 2007)Google Scholar; Lewis, Joanna, “The British Empire and World History: Welfare Imperialism and ‘Soft’ Power in the Rise and Fall of Colonial Rule,” in Colonialism and Welfare: Social Policy and the British Imperial Legacy, ed. Midgley, James and Piachaud, David (Cheltenham, UK, 2011), 17–35;Google Scholar and Morgan, David John, The Official History of Colonial Development, 5 vols. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1980)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Kennedy, Islands of White, 8.

¹⁶ Perry, Adele, “Interlocuting Empire: Colonial Womanhood, Settler Identity, and Frances Herring,” in Rediscovering the British World, ed. Buckner, Phillip and Francis, R. Douglas (Calgary, Alberta, 2005), 159–79,Google Scholar at 160. For the difference made by the distinctive space of the colonial frontier, see Marilyn Lake, “Australian Frontier Feminism and the Marauding White Man,” in Gender and Imperialism, 123–36.

¹⁷ Cmd. 3573, “Memorandum on Native Policy in East Africa,” (London, 1930); Cmd. 3574, “Statement of the Conclusion of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom as regards Closer Union in East Africa,” (London, 1930).

¹⁸ Ailsa Turner to Mrs. Stephen Ellis, 20 June 1930, EAWL Papers.

¹⁹ “Draft notes on Conference of East Africa Women's League on the Results of the Proposal put forward by the British Government,” 27 June 1930, EAWL Papers.

²⁰ Eleanor Cole, “Memorandum,” 18 March 1931, EAWL Papers. A version of this document, the text of Cole's evidence before the Joint Committee, was published as “East Africa Women's League: The Memorandum,” Times of East Africa, 23 May 1931, 17.

²¹ Ibid. Of course, where “home” was for the settlers remained complicated (Lonsdale, “Kenya,” 102). See also Buettner, Elizabeth, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar, especially chapter 5.

²² Ailsa Turner to the Editor, East Africa, 22 September 1930, EAWL Papers. Something similar took place on one previous occasion: during debates concerning the Indian Question, the EAWL had organized a committee to represent their interests in London (“The Kenya Women's Committee,” East African Standard, 21 September 1923, 3). I am grateful to Brett Shadle for this reference.

²³ Dilley, British Policy in Kenya Colony, 179–208; and Rotberg, Robert I., “The Federation Movement in British East and Central Africa, 1889–1953,” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 2, no. 2 (Spring 1963): 141–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Gorman, Daniel, “Organic Union or Aggressive Altruism: Imperial Internationalism in East Africa in the 1920s,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42, no. 2 (March 2014): 258–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 259.

²⁵ Callahan, Michael, A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929–1946 (Brighton, UK, 2004), 37Google Scholar; Gorman, “Organic Union or Aggressive Altruism”; and Wylie, Diana, “Confrontation over Kenya: The Colonial Office and Its Critics, 1918–1940,” The Journal of African History 18, no. 3 (1977): 427–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Regarding African politicization in interwar Kenya, see Kanogo, Tabitha, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905–63, (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Kershaw, Greet, Mau Mau from Below, (Athens, OH, 1997)Google Scholar; Thomas, Lynn, Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction and the State in Kenya (Berkeley, CA, 2003)Google Scholar.

²⁶ Dilley, British Policy in Kenya Colony, 141–78; Gorman, “Organic Union or Aggressive Altruism,” 275; Youé, Christopher, “The Threat of Settler Rebellion and the Imperial Predicament: The Denial of Indian Rights in Kenya, 1923,” Canadian Journal of History 12, no. 3 (1977): 347–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for the impact, Jackson, “White Man's Country,” 348.

²⁷ Vivian Ward, “Confidential: Report of Progress,” 22 October 1930, EAWL Papers.

²⁸ Lonsdale, “Kenya,” 76. The debate on Closer Union would resurface, and resulted in the establishment of a High Commission for Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika in 1948 and the formation of the Central African Union in 1953.

²⁹ Jackson, “White Man's Country,” 345; Londsale, “Kenya,” 79. See also Duder, C. J. D. and Youé, C. P., “Paice's Place: Race and Politics in Nanyuki District, Kenya, in the 1920s,” African Affairs 93, no. 371 (April 1994): 253–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Redley, “The Politics of a Predicament,” especially chapter 10.

³⁰ Shadle, “White Settlers and the Law,” 511.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Anderson, David, “Sexual Threat and Settler Society: ‘Black Perils’ in Kenya c. 1907–30,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38, no. 1 (February 2010): 47–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Will, “Dangers to the Colony: Loose Women and the ‘Poor White’ Problem in Kenya,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 14, no. 2 (Summer 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. By 1931, there were four European women for every five European men in Kenya, both as the wives of settlers and officials and as farmers and professionals in their own right (Lonsdale, “Kenya,” 78). By the 1950s, single white women in Kenya outnumbered those who were married (Jackson, “Dangers to the Colony”).

³³ For example, “Mr. and Mrs. McGregor Ross: Addresses in more Moderate Vein,” East Africa, 4 December 1930.

³⁴ Wylie, “Confrontation over Kenya,” and Wylie, Diana, “Norman Leys and McGregor Ross: A Case Study in the Conscience of African Empire, 1900–39,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 5, no. 3 (1977): 294-309CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further to the question of settler injustice and humanitarian response see Okia, Opolot, “In the Interests of Community: Archdeacon Walter Owen and the Issue of Forced Labour in Colonial Kenya, 1921-30, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, no. 1 (January 2004): 19-40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Okia, Opolot, “The Northey Forced Labor Crisis, 1920-21: A Symptomatic Reading,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 41, no. 2 (May 2008): 263-93Google Scholar; and Shadle, Brett, “White Settlers and the Law in Early Colonial Kenya,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 4, no. 3 (October 2010): 510–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ Lesley More to Isabel Ross, 17 August 1918, MSS. Afr. s. 1876 15/2, RH; Isabel Ross to William McGregor Ross, 15 February 1918, MSS. Afr. s. 2305 3/2, RH.

³⁶ Alison Neilans, interview with Isabel Ross, 19 December 1933, 3AMS/D/01, Women's Library (WL), London; Isabel Ross to Alison Neilans, 4 January 1934, 3AMS/D/01, WL. Ross's personal papers at Rhodes House Library, Oxford, include correspondence with the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women, Friends Foreign Mission, International Review of Missions, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. Issues discussed included female circumcision, the status of African women in marriage, and regulations concerning prostitution in the Kenya.

³⁷ “The Memoirs of William McGregor Ross and Isabel Ross,” MSS. Afr. s. 2305 2/48, RH. Olave Baden-Powell is better known as “Chief Guide” and wife of Robert Baden-Powell the founder of the Scouting and Guiding movements. Her short time as president came after her husband's death in Kenya, and is remembered in EAWL histories as inspiring a “new spirit for the League” (“President's Report to the Council,” Women in Kenya: The Journal of the East Africa Women's League, February 1957, EAWL Papers).

³⁸ Ailsa Turner (d. 1949) was the wife of Colonel Ralph Turner, the South Africa Trade Commissioner in Nairobi, and was involved in numerous voluntary organizations besides the EAWL.

³⁹ Lady Eleanor was the second of six children born to Gerald William Balfour, second earl of Balfour (d. 1945), Conservative MP, and Lady Elizabeth “Betty” Edith Bulwer-Lytton (d. 1942). The Balfour family was politically active and well connected.

⁴⁰ Huxley, Elspeth, Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya (London, 1985), 100–04Google Scholar. The incidents involving Galbraith Cole are discussed in Hughes, Lotte, Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure (New York, 2006), 67–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, 145–46. Both cases were presented by humanitarian networks as evidence of the inevitable abuses linked to white settlement.

⁴¹ Cole, Eleanor, Random Recollections of a Pioneer Kenya Settler (Suffolk, UK, 1975)Google Scholar.

⁴² Wylie, “Norman Leys and McGregor Ross,” 304.

⁴³ Lady Moore was involved in numerous voluntary organizations, including the YWCA, League of Mercy, and Girl Guides—her diaries are full of “adventures with local Good Works”—but she “refused, on advice received, to join the committee of the East African Women's League” (Lady Daphne Moore, Kenya Diary, 22 June 1929, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 466/3, RH).

⁴⁴ Gladys Delamere was the second wife of Hugh Cholmondeley, third baron Delamere. She was League president in 1940 and mayor of Nairobi from 1938 to 1939. Huxley contrasts Lady Delamere's welfare work with her reputation as a socialite (Huxley, Out in the Midday Sun, 56). Gertrude Grogan was the wife of Ewart “Cape to Cairo” Grogan and League president in 1942.

⁴⁵ Attendance Sheet, Women's Conference, 7 June 1930, EAWL Papers. Lonsdale notes that by 1931 seven percent of Kenya's white population was European (Lonsdale, “Kenya,” 79).

⁴⁶ Ailsa Turner to Mrs. Stephen Ellis, 20 June 1930, EAWL Papers.

⁴⁷ Ibid; “European Women's Conference on His Majesty's Government's proposals on “Closer Union” and “Native Policy” in East Africa,” [n.d.], EAWL Papers.

⁴⁸ “The Memoirs of William McGregor Ross and Isabel Ross,” MSS. Afr. s. 2305 2/48, RH.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ “A Short History of the East Africa Women's League,” Kenya National Archives (hereafter KNA) GH/7/24.

⁵¹ Olave Baden-Powell to Charlotte Mitchell, 11 October 1941, enclosure Bishop of Mombasa to “my dear fellow worker in the diocese,” October 1941, EAWL Papers (emphasis original).

⁵² Gladys Beecher was a member of the Leakey family, prominent in Kenya Colony, and was the sister of archaeologist Louis Leakey. Leonard Beecher began his career as a Church Mission Society missionary in Kenya in 1930, rising to become archbishop of East Africa.

⁵³ Joan Standish King, “Notes for the consideration of our sub-committee,” 12 August 1960, EAWL Papers.

⁵⁴ Amendments to the EAWL constitution in 1951 stipulated a multistep vetting process for membership. Applications were made to a particular branch to be proposed and seconded by current League members, discussed by the branch leader and her committee, and then forwarded to the League secretary, who would put it to the Standing Membership Committee. Consisting of the EAWL president, one vice president, and two council members, the membership committee “may accept or reject it without assigning any reason for such rejection.” (“East Africa Women's League Constitution & Bye-Laws, Amended 1951,” EAWL Papers).

⁵⁵ Mabel S. Murray to Ailsa Turner, 13 February 1930, KNA GH/7/24.

⁵⁶ Ailsa Turner to Major E. A. T. Dutton, 19 February 1930, KNA GH/7/24. The reply from Dutton (28 February 1930) was a forwarded note from the Attorney General's office stating that without a criminal conviction immorality was no grounds for exclusion.

⁵⁷ Catherine Griffiths to Director of Education, 21 October 1944, KNA AH/13/132. Cited in Jackson, “Dangers to the Colony,” n. 49.

⁵⁸ Jackson, “Dangers to the Colony.”

⁵⁹ Shaw, Carolyn Martin, Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex and Class in Kenya (Minneapolis, MN, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 10 December 1930, EAWL Papers.

⁶¹ See, for example, Lady Moore, Kenya Diaries, 27 August 1930, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 466/3, RH; and Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 28 December 1931, EAWL Papers.

⁶² Trzebinski, The Kenya Pioneers, 5. Elspeth Huxley depicts Cole as “endowed with intelligence, enthusiasm for good causes, a strong sense of duty and the heart of a lion.” Huxley, Out in the Midday Sun, 100.

⁶³ For one example of such relationships see correspondence between EAWL vice president Lady Elyzabeth Wilson and her nephew, Colonel Henry Howard, who was employed at the Colonial Secretariat in Nairobi (KNA GH/7/24). Gladys Delamere, Dorothy Hughes, Miriam Janisch, and Olga Watkins were among the League members involved in local politics. Others were encouraged to take up this work (see D. F. M. Pickford, “Women in Local Government: A Talk Given to the League Council,” Women in Kenya: The Journal of the East Africa Women's League, August 1958, EAWL Papers).

⁶⁴ “East Africa Women's League Annual Report 1935–36,” KNA GH/7/24.

⁶⁵ See, for example, the Annual Reports from 1932–33 and 1933–34, both in KNA GH/7/24.

⁶⁶ One notable exception to this focus on European welfare was League support through fund-raising and advocacy for Lady Grigg's initiative to further maternity and nursing services for each of the European, Asian, and African communities in Kenya. (For example, in Ailsa Turner to the Colonial Secretary, Nairobi, 16 August 1928, EAWL Papers).

⁶⁷ “A Short History of the East Africa Women's League,” KNA GH/7/24. During WWII especially, the League would be an essential network for the white women who were left to manage farms.

⁶⁸ See “A Short History of the East Africa Women's League”; “East Africa Women's League Annual Report, 1931–32”; and S. Silvester, “East Africa Women's League, President's Annual Report, March 1949,” all KNA GH/7/24.

⁶⁹ “Advice for New Arrivals in Kenya,” ISOS/12, WL.

⁷⁰ McCulloch, Jock, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935 (Bloomington, IN, 2000), 103Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Minutes of Council Meeting, 14 June 1926, EAWL Papers. See also Anderson, “Sexual Threat and Settler Society,” 57, 59.

⁷² S. Silvester, “East Africa Women's League, President's Annual Report, March 1949,” KNA GH/7/24.

⁷³ “East Africa Women's League, Annual Report, 1935–36,” KNA GH/7/24.

⁷⁴ Ibid. A copy of the Brown Book survives in the EAWL archive. See also Anderson, David, “Master and Servant in Colonial Kenya,” Journal of African History 41, no. 3 (November 2000): 459–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for a broader context, Hansen, Karen Tranberg, Distant Companions: Servants and Employers in Zambia, 1900–1985 (Ithaca, NY, 1989)Google Scholar; and Cock, Jacklyn, Maids and Madams: Domestic Workers under Apartheid (London, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ “East Africa Women's League, Annual Report, 1935–36,” KNA GH/7/24.

⁷⁶ “A Short History of the East Africa Women's League,” KNA GH/7/24. There were cases of successful interracial welfare work. From 1949 to 1951, the EAWL prison visitor, Kit Henn, led the League to advocate for the case of an Indian woman, Gurnam Kaur, who had been convicted of murder. The League's intervention ultimately resulted in Kaur's release. For the case, see KNA AG/52/423, MLA/1/329 and AG/52/357. Henn's files are in Micr. Afr. 589, RH. I am grateful to Stacey Hynd for this reference.

⁷⁷ Kanogo, Squatters, 3; Presley, Cora Ann, “The Mau Mau Rebellion, Kikuyu Women, and Social Change,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 22, no. 3 (1988), 506–7Google Scholar. On the experience of African women under colonial rule in Kenya, see Kanogo, Tabitha, African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–50 (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar; Mutongi, Kenda, Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family and Community in Kenya, (Chicago, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shadle, Brett, ‘Girl Cases’ Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890–1970 (Portsmouth, NH, 2006)Google Scholar; Thomas, Politics of the Womb; and White, Luise, Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Thomas, Politics of the Womb; and Wipper, Audrey, “Kikuyu Women and the Harry Thuku Disturbances: Some Uniformities of Female Militancy,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 59, no. 3 (September 1989): 300–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ Mackenzie, Fiona, “Political Economy of the Environment, Gender, and Resistance under Colonialism: Murang'a District, Kenya, 1910–1950,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 25, no. 2 (1991): 226–56Google Scholar, at 228, 250.

⁸⁰ Minutes of Council Meetings, 14 October 1929; 3 February 1930; and 14 April 1930, EAWL Papers.

⁸¹ Lewis, Joanna, Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–52 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar; Meeting Minutes of Executive, March 1943, EAWL Papers.

⁸² S. Silvester, “East Africa Women's League, President's Annual Report, March 1949,” KNA GH/7/24.

⁸³ For example, African Social Welfare Committee, Minutes and Correspondence 1949–51, EAWL Papers. The first joint official and voluntary Conference on African Social Welfare took place in Nairobi in 1940 (“A Short History of the East Africa Women's League,” KNA GH/7/24).

⁸⁴ Wipper, Audrey, “The Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization: The Co-optation of Leadership,” African Studies Review 18, no. 3 (December 1975): 99–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁵ Presley, “The Mau Mau Rebellion,” 519, 520.

⁸⁶ Vivian Ward, “Confidential: Report of Progress of East African Delegation,” 5 October 1930, EAWL Papers. Besides Lord Delamere, the deputation included Colonel Vivian Ward as Secretary, Mr. Thomas O'Shea, and Mr. McLelland Wilson, and representing Tanganyika, Major Brown, and Mr. Menkin.

⁸⁷ “£1,891: Associations' Help Yesterday, £150 Addition,” East African Standard, 29 July 1930; “Farewell Dinner to Deputation,” East African Standard, 6 September 1930. The funds did not include Cole's, whose incidental expenses were covered by the EAWL.

⁸⁸ “Deputations Task at Home,” East African Standard, 9 August 1930.

⁸⁹ Lord Delamere to Gladys Delamere, 16 April 1930, MSS. Afr. s.1424, RH. This was a task taken seriously: daily meetings were held en route—except Sundays and when in port—and on arrival the delegates secured offices near Whitehall and immediately set to work on a series of press conferences and interviews with key political figures, including General Hertzog of South Africa and Lord Passfield, secretary of state for the Colonies. Among others, speaking engagements were arranged before a meeting of the Conservative MPs and peers at the House of Commons, and in a no doubt less welcoming event, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. The press campaign was advised by Mr. Joelson, editor of East Africa.

⁹⁰ Ailsa Turner to Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, 7 August 1930, EAWL Papers.

⁹¹ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 26 October 1930, EAWL Papers.

⁹² Turner's voluminous correspondence in the EAWL files attest to this effort. Cables regarding the women's conference were sent to politicians in Britain, Kenya, South Africa, and Southern Rhodesia, and one-hundred copies of the conference report went to the office of the Conservative Whip in London. Cole forwarded to Turner news clippings and the confidential progress reports by deputation secretary Colonel Vivian Ward. Letters from Cole to Turner are frequently marked “Please return to AT” across the top, suggesting that Turner circulated them at least among EAWL members.

⁹³ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 14 February 1931, EAWL Papers (emphasis original).

⁹⁴ Ibid.

⁹⁵ “East Africa Women's League: The Memorandum,” Times of East Africa, 23 May 1931, 17.

⁹⁶ Ibid.

⁹⁷ Joint Committee on Closer Union in East Africa, vol. 1, The Report together with the Proceedings of the Committee (London, 1931), 594Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ “East Africa Women's League: The Memorandum,” Times of East Africa, 23 May 1931, 17.

⁹⁹ Ibid. See also European Women's Conference on His Majesty's Government's proposals on “Closer Union” and “Native Policy” in East Africa, [n.d.], EAWL Papers.

¹⁰⁰ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 14 February 1931, EAWL Papers.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² Ibid.; Ailsa Turner to District Vice Presidents and Members of EAWL Council, 13 January 1931, and Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 17 April 1931 (both EAWL Papers). Although the women's point of view represented by Cole did not differ from that of the male delegates, Cole's claim to speak on behalf of a unified voice of women in Kenya seemingly received less criticism in Britain than similar claims made by the male delegates. (For example, comments in “Notes of an Interview with Lord Passfield at the Colonial Office, on Tuesday October 7th 1930” in Vivian Ward, “Confidential: Report of Progress,” 22 October 1930, EAWL Papers).

¹⁰³ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 13 September 1930, EAWL Papers. Cole's domestic responsibilities were complicated by family illnesses, the demands of single motherhood, and her commute into London to attend delegate meetings. She tried to hand over the work on more than one occasion, encouraging Turner to find a replacement for her.

¹⁰⁴ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 27 September 1930, EAWL Papers.

¹⁰⁵ Eleanor Cole to Gladys Delamere, 22 May 1931, EAWL Papers.

¹⁰⁶ “East Africa Women's League, Annual Report 1931-32,” KNA GH/7/24.

¹⁰⁷ Minutes of EAWL Council Meeting, 18 August 1930, EAWL Papers.

¹⁰⁸ On the new internationalism, see Grant, Kevin, Levine, Philippa, and Trentmann, Frank, eds., Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950 (New York, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Iriye, Akira, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley, CA, 2002)Google Scholar; McCarthy, Helen, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism c. 1918–45 (Manchester, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pedersen, Susan and Mandler, Peter, eds., After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, “Modernity and Trusteeship: Tensions of Empire in Britain between the Wars,” in Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late-Victorian Era to World War II, ed. Daunton, Martin and Rieger, Bernhard (Oxford, 2001), 203–20;Google Scholar and Pennybacker, Susan D., From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton, NJ, 2009)Google Scholar, in addition to those cited in note 13.

¹⁰⁹ Barbara Bush, “Britain's Conscience in Africa: White Women, Race and Imperial Politics in Interwar Britain,” in Gender and Imperialism; Gorman, Daniel, “Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic of Women and Children in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 19, no. 2 (June 2007): 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fletcher, Ian Christopher, Mayhall, Laura E. Nym, and Levine, Philippa, eds., Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation, and Race (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Levine, Philippa, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (New Haven, CT, 2004)Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, “The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy over ‘Child Slavery’ in Hong Kong 1917–1941,” Past and Present 171, no. 1 (May 2001): 161–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, “National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politics of Colonial Policy-Making,” Journal of Modern History 63, no. 4 (December 1991): 647–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pugh, Patricia, Educate, Agitate, Organize: 100 Years of Fabian Socialism (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Minute by J. E. H. Flood, 1935, The National Archives, Kew, Colonial Office (hereafter TNA CO) 323/1331/11. Organizations appearing frequently in CO files include the Medical Women's Federation, the Women's Freedom League, National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, British Commonwealth League, and the St. Joan's Social and Political Alliance. According to Helen McCarthy, such activity was part of a broader shift in British political culture towards increased associational life in pursuit of active citizenship. McCarthy, Helen, “Parties, Voluntary Associations and Democratic Life in Interwar Britain,” Historical Journal 50, no. 4 (December 2007): 891–912CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹¹ Miller, Carol, “The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations,” in International Health Organisations and Movements, 1918–1939, ed. Weindling, Paul (Cambridge, 1995), 154–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 154.

¹¹² Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 13 September 1930, EAWL Papers.

¹¹³ “Delegates talk to Englishwomen,” Times of East Africa, 14 November 1930; “Lady Eleanor Cole on Kenya: Speech to Imperial Conference Delegates,” East African Standard, 6 November 1930; and numerous letters from Cole to Turner, EAWL Papers.

¹¹⁴ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 3 October 1930, EAWL Papers.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ For the controversy see Pedersen, “National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts”; and Thomas, Politics of the Womb.

¹¹⁷ Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 233 (December 11, 1929), cols. 608–09.

¹¹⁸ Eric Dutton to Ailsa Turner, 30 December 1929, KNA GH/7/24. In her response, Ailsa Turner pledged “to do everything in the power of the League to assist in the matter.” (Ailsa Turner to Eric Dutton, 12 January 1930, KNA GH/7/24).

¹¹⁹ Cole, “Memorandum.” For a discussion of Huxley as a later example of similar propaganda on behalf of Kenya, see Webster, Wendy, “Elspeth Huxley: Gender, Empire and Narratives of a Nation, 1935–64,” Women's History Review 8, no. 3 (September 1999): 527–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²⁰ Cole, “Memorandum.”

¹²¹ Ibid. As such they “most bitterly resented the implication in these papers that natives were not getting a fair deal from their employers and that there was not one word in them of encouragement to settlement.”

¹²² Burton, Burdens of History.

¹²³ “Lady Eleanor Cole's Speech,” [n.d.], EAWL Papers.

¹²⁴ “Report of Public Meeting,” 12 December 1938, TNA CO 847/11/12. Specifically, this meeting concerned the issue of the status of African women in marriage, another key issue for feminist reformers in this period (see Shadle, ‘Girl Cases’).

¹²⁵ British Commonwealth League, Report of Conference ‘The Citizen Rights of Women within the British Empire’ Caxton Hall July 9th &10th, 1925 . As cited in Woollacott, Angela, “Inventing Commonwealth and Pan-Pacific Feminisms: Australian Women's Internationalist Activism in the 1920s–30s,” Gender & History 10, no. 3 (November 1998): 425–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 428n17.

¹²⁶ Burton, Burdens of History, 43; Levine, Gender and Empire, 6.

¹²⁷ Cole, “Memorandum.”

¹²⁸ Minutes of Council Meeting, 18 August 1930, EAWL Papers. This was in reference to the female circumcision controversy. In 1933, Cole publically defended questions concerning female doctors and the education of African girls in Kenya, as raised by MPs Edith Picton-Turbervill and Eleanor Rathbone at the National Council of Women (Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 27 October 1933, EAWL Papers).

¹²⁹ Minutes of Council Meeting, 18 August 1930, EAWL Papers. During a visit to London in 1930, League member Mrs. F. O'B. Wilson met with the duchess of Atholl regarding “the League's attitude to Native female circumcision, and of the desire of the League and Kenya women in general to help and dispel the ignorance and alleviate the sufferings of the native races.” In spite of her assessment, Ailsa Turner remained positive about their influence, reporting that subsequently the duchess of Atholl had written to her requesting information about the women's view on the white papers and several months later noting that “from various utterances the Duchess had made it was evident Mrs. Wilson's interview had had a good effect.” (Minutes of Council Meeting, 8 December 1930, EAWL Papers).

¹³⁰ Woollacott, “Inventing Commonwealth and Pan-Pacific Feminisms,” 445. Also, Susan Pedersen, “Metaphors of the Schoolroom.”

¹³¹ East Africa Women's League Annual Report, 1932–22, KNA GH/7/24.

¹³² Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 28 December 1931, EAWL Papers.

¹³³ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 18 November 1931, EAWL Papers.

¹³⁴ Working Party on Voluntary Work Among Women in the Colonies, Minutes of the 3rd Meeting of the Committee, 10 November 1950, TNA CO 859/226/2. The Social Welfare Advisory Committee at the Colonial Office received regular reports from the EAWL (for example, in TNA CO 997/4).

¹³⁵ East Africa Women's League, Report of the Conference of Women's Organisations in Africa, (Nairobi, April 1949). By the 1950s ties were established with the Uganda Council of Women, the Tanganyika Women's Service League, and the Women's Institute movement in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

¹³⁶ Other links were less productive. For example, Ailsa Turner's request for advice from the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene on preventing “the possibility of a half-caste race in our midst” in 1938 was not well received; she received in reply a lecture on moral responsibility to all regardless of race, which seemed to end their correspondence (Ailsa Turner to Alison Neilans, 7 December 1938, 3AMS/D/28, WL).

¹³⁷ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 28 December 1931, EAWL Papers.

¹³⁸ Ibid.

¹³⁹ Ibid.

¹⁴⁰ This claim was not uncontested. See for example the scathing remarks made by the then governor of Kenya regarding the League's political activity in Sir Henry Moore to Lady Baden-Powell, 20 October 1941, KNA GH/7/24.

¹⁴¹ Eleanor Cole to Ailsa Turner, 28 December 1931, EAWL Papers.

¹⁴² In spite of the League's intentions, what began as the multiracial women's movement in Kenya was used by African women as an effective political platform. See Wipper, Audrey, “Equal Rights for Women in Kenya?,” Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 3 (October 1971): 429–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴³ As feminist theorist Joan Scott has defined it, politics is “the process by which plays of power and knowledge constitute identity and experience.” Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 5Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Perry, “Interlocuting Empire,” 174.

¹⁴⁵ The belief that its welfare activities could be apolitical fits the EAWL into what Ruth Frankenberg has argued is the invisibility of the politics of race to white women engaged in them by virtue of their privileged status as white. Frankenberg, Ruth, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis, MN, 1993)Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ Pedersen, “Metaphors of the Schoolroom,” 203.

¹⁴⁷ Lonsdale, John, “Britannia's Mau Mau,” in Penultimate Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain, ed. Louis, William. Roger (London, 2007), 259–74Google Scholar, at 264.