White people in Kenya
This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2009) |
Total population | |
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42,868 (2019) Rift Valley, Coast Province, Central Province | |
Languages | |
English, Italian, Settler Swahili | |
Religion | |
Predominantly Christianity |
Part of a series on the |
Culture of Kenya |
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Cuisine |
White people in Kenya or White Kenyans are those born in or resident in
History
The Age of Discovery first led to European interaction with the region of present-day Kenya. The coastal regions were seen as a valuable foothold in eastern trade routes, and Mombasa became a key port for ivory. The Portuguese established a presence in the region for two hundred years between 1498 and 1698, before losing control of the coast to the Sultanate of Oman when Fort Jesus was captured.[2]
European exploration of the interior commenced in 1844 when two German missionaries, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, ventured inland with the aim of spreading Christianity. The region soon sparked the imagination of other adventurers and gradually their stories began to awaken their governments to the potential of the area.[3]
The rise of
East Africa Protectorate
Although the first
By the end of 1903, the population of settlers had increased to 100.
By 1914, there were approximately 1,300 European settlers in the country, and prior to 1912, South Africans formed the majority of Kenya's White settlers.
Due to the high start-up costs involved in producing coffee and cattle, Kenya earned a reputation as a "big man's frontier". Such men were eager to make Kenya another "White man's country" along the lines of South Africa or Australia, and recognised the need for the "small man" with limited capital on small acreage to increase the White population and provide a more solid foundation for their vision.[7]
In 1919, the UK Government launched the
Kenya Colony
In 1920, the Protectorate became a Crown colony. Land confiscations, forced labour, and African participation in higher education, bureaucratic institutions, and the First World War helped spark a substantive African nationalist movement in Kenya during the 1920s. Leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta and Harry Thuku highlighted a view of an unjust political and social situation for the non-settler population of Kenya.[citation needed]
A last attempt to recruit settlers to Kenya occurred in 1945. Only about 500 Europeans migrated to Kenya, meaning the European population remained low, amounting to just 23,033 as against an African population of 5,200,000.[5]
Following the
Republic of Kenya
By the early-1960s, the political willingness of the British government to maintain Kenya as a colony was in decline and in 1962 the Lancaster House agreement set a date for Kenyan independence. Realising that a unilateral declaration of independence course like Rhodesia's was not possible after the Mau Mau Uprising, the majority of the 60,000 White settlers considered migrating elsewhere.[9] Along with Kenyan's Indian population, Europeans and their descendants were given the choice of retaining their British passports and suffering a diminution in rights, or acquiring new Kenyan passports. Few chose to acquire citizenship, and many White Kenyans departed the country. The World Bank led a willing-buyer, willing-seller scheme, known as the 'million acre' scheme that was largely financed by secret British subsidies. The scheme saw the redistribution of swathes of White-owned farmland to the newly prosperous Kikuyu elite.[citation needed]
In the
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), In 2019 there were 69,621 Europeans in Kenya, of which 42,868 were Kenyan citizens.[1] The proportion that are Kenyan citizens has likely increased due to the implementation of dual nationality in 2010. There are also British citizens residing in Kenya who may be of any race; according to the BBC, they numbered at about 32,000 in 2006.[11]
Socioeconomics
Early 20th century
Dating from 1902, the East Africa Protectorate government granted considerable concessions to European settlers in order to enable them to entrench themselves politically and economically.[5] Aside from the land laws, they benefited from the coercion of African labour, forms of taxation such as the hut tax, the resettlement of Africans in native reserves, and the granting of monopoly rights to settlers for the production of certain export crops.[5] In 1907, despite Kenya still being a Protectorate, the Colonial Office authorised the establishment of a Legislative Council on a franchise limited to Europeans.[5] Despite these policies, in 1914, the settler agricultural production accounted for only 25 per cent of total exports.
The aftermath of the First World War saw a spectacular increase in European agricultural production, largely due to protective tariffs on imports and prohibiting African cultivation of certain crops such as coffee and pyrethrum. In the 1920s settler agricultural production accounted for approximately 80 per cent of all export earnings.[5] On the whole however, settler economic performance was unreliable and unlike in Rhodesia or South Africa where Africans were forced by land scarcity to seek economic relief in wage labor on European farms, thus boosting productivity on such farms, Africans in Kenya were able to cultivate or graze livestock on their own land, producing for the domestic market.[5]
Life for Europeans in Kenya during the 1920s would later be immortalized in Karen Blixen's memoir Out of Africa. The presence of herds of elephants and zebra, and other wild animals on these estates drew wealthy aristocracy from Europe and America, who came attracted by big game hunting.[citation needed]
Present day
Economically, virtually all Europeans in Kenya belong to the middle- and upper-middle-class.[citation needed] They formerly clustered in the country's highland region, the so-called 'White Highlands'. The White Highlands were depopulated of White settlers before independence with much of the land being sold to Africans under the Million acre settlement scheme.[12] Nowadays only a small minority of them are still landowners (livestock and game ranchers, horticulturists and farmers), whereas the majority work in the tertiary sector: in finance, import, air transport, and hospitality.[citation needed]
Societal integration
Apart from isolated individuals such as the late anthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey, F.R.S., Kenyan White people have virtually completely retreated from Kenyan politics, and are no longer represented in public service and parastatals, from which the last remaining staff from colonial times retired in the 1970s.[citation needed]
The book and movie
Controversy associated with "the Happy Valley set"
The "
The area around Naivasha was one of the first to be settled in Kenya by White people and was one of the main hunting grounds of the 'set'. [16] The colonial town of Nyeri, Kenya, to the east of the Aberdare Range, was the centre of Happy Valley settlers. [17]
The White community in Kenya in the years before the Second World War was divided into two distinct factions: settlers, on the one side, and colonial officials and tradesmen, on the other. Both were dominated by upper-middle-class and upper-class British and Irish (chiefly
The height of the Happy Valley set's influence was in the late 1920s. The recession sparked by the
Some of the members of the Happy Valley set were:
Since 2015, descendants of the Happy Valley set have been appearing in the news, particularly deaths at the hands of The Hon. Tom Cholmondeley, the great-grandson of the famous Lord Delamere.[18][19]
See also
- List of Kenyan European people
- British diaspora in Africa
- White African
- White people
- Kenyans
- History of the Jews in Kenya
- Demographics of Kenya
References
- ^ a b "2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census Volume IV: Distribution of Population by Socio-Economic Characteristics". Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-470-65898-7.[page needed]
- ISBN 978-0-521-58342-8.
- S2CID 161213100.
- ^ JSTOR 40760172.
- ^ JSTOR 723097.
- .
- ISBN 978-0-8050-7653-0.
- ^ McGreal, Chris (26 October 2006). "A lost world". The Guardian. London.
- ^ "Philip Leakey: poster boy for a question-driven life". The Seattle Times. 19 August 2011. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
- ^ Brits Abroad: Country-by-country, BBC News, 11 December 2006, retrieved 20 July 2009
- S2CID 237699853.
- ^ Eight months for Kenya aristocrat, BBC News, 14 May 2009, retrieved 20 July 2009
- ^ Burton-Hill, Clemency (4 November 2006). "A trial that will decide the future of Kenya". The Spectator.
- ^ Storm clouds over Happy Valley The Telegraph. 16 May 2009
- ^ "Naivasha, Kenya" (tourist information), go2africa.com, 2006, webpage: Go2A.
- ^ "Cultural Safari" (concerning Aberdare & Happy Valley settlers), MagicalKenya.com, webpage: MK.
- ^ Gettleman, Jeffrey (18 August 2016). "Thomas Cholmondeley, Scion Implicated in Killings of 2 Kenyans, Dies at 48". The New York Times.
- ^ August 18, 2016, Thursday (22 December 2020). "Delamere heir Tom Cholmondeley dies at 48 after surgery". Business Daily.
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