White people in Kenya

Although the first Land Regulations Act was passed in 1897, few Europeans settled in the country before completion of the Uganda railway. In 1902, Sir Charles Eliot, then-British Commissioner of the Protectorate, initiated a policy of settling European colonists in what would become the White Highlands region. Eliot's vision for the Protectorate was to turn the Highlands into a settlers' frontier, perceiving the region to be admirably suited for a white man's country.[5] The Crown Lands Ordinance was thus passed, allowing for Crown Land to be granted either freehold or leasehold for 99 years. Eliot believed the only way to improve the local economy and ensure the profitability of the Uganda railway, was to encourage European settlement and endeavour in hitherto large areas of uncultivated fertile lands.[6]

By the end of 1903, the population of settlers had increased to 100.[7] A further batch of 280 Boers later arrived from South Africa. Amongst the first settlers were affluent British gentry such as Lord Delamere, Lord Hindlip and Lord Cranworth who had the necessary capital to develop large areas of land and live a pseudo-aristocratic life. The land laws were so favourable to settlers that they were described as the most liberal in the world.[8]

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.[9][10] During the First World War, many more South Africans arrived in East Africa as part of the campaign against German East Africa and stayed to work in Kenya's service economy. By 1915, the government was offering 999 year leases to encourage settlement as well as exemptions from land tax. The state also subsidised White farmers' produce to give them a competitive advantage over Black smallholders in the open markets.

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.[11]

In 1919, the UK Government launched the Ex-Soldier Settlement Scheme. It became the largest single allocation of land for European settlement in Kenyan history, involving over 2,000,000 acres of land, and increasing the area of White settlement by a third. Applicants were required to be British subjects of pure European origin, who had served in any officially recognised imperial service unit in the war. The majority hailed from Britain, with sizeable amounts from Ireland, India and South Africa.[12] There were also a small number of Canadian cattle ranchers, Australian graziers and New Zealand farmers.[13] A large proportion of the soldier settlers hailed from the upper classes, with a third having attended British public schools. On the whole, the aristocratic soldier settlers were sons, brothers, brothers-in-law, or married to the nieces of the rich and powerful in Britain.[14] Notable participants in the scheme included: Viscount Bury, Viscount Broome, Sir Delvis Broughton, Sir G.F Milne, and Sir Hubert Gough, Maurice Egerton and Phaedrig O'Brien. As a result of the scheme, the European population had risen to 9,651 by 1921.[15]

Flag of British East Africa

In 1920, the Protectorate became a Crown Colony. Land alienation, forced labour, and African participation in higher education, bureaucratic institutions, and the First World War helped spark a substantive Kenyan nationalist movement in the 1920s. Leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta and Harry Thuku highlighted a view of an unjust political and social situation for the vast majority of Kenyans.

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 the African population of 5,200,000.[16]

Following World War II, some Kenyans began a violent anti-colonial campaign centred largely on the Kikuyu known as the Mau Mau Uprising. The deaths of dozens of European settlers and their African servants, triggered a war with the UK Government that resulted in 20,000 Kenyans dead. British counter-insurgency tactics included forcibly relocating civilians into "villagisation" schemes, and detaining and torturing Mau Mau suspects in prison camps.

By the early-1960s, Britain's political willingness 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 emigration.[17] Along with Kenyan Asians, 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.

There were an estimated 41,500 White people in Kenya as of 2009, of which 7,600 were Kenyan citizens.[18] 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.[19]

Dating from 1902, the East Africa Protectorate government granted considerable concessions to Europeans to enable them to entrench themselves politically and economically.[20] Aside from the land laws, they benefited from the coercion of African labour, repressive native taxation, the resettlement of Africans in native reserves, and the grant of monopoly rights to settlers for the production of certain export crops.[21] In 1907, despite Kenya still being a Protectorate, the Colonial Office authorised the establishment of a Legislative Council on a franchise limited to Europeans.[22] Despite these policies, in 1914, the settler agricultural production accounted for only 25 percent 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.[23] 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 labour 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.[24]

Life for Europeans in Kenya during the 1920s would later be immortalised 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.

Economically, virtually all Europeans in Kenya belong to the middle- and upper-middle-class. They formerly clustered in the country's highland region, the so-called 'White Highlands', where the Cholmondeley (Delamere) family, as one of the few remaining white landowners, still owns over 100,000 acres (400 km²) of farmland (mainly the vast Soysambu Estate) in the Rift Valley. Nowadays, only a small minority of them still are landowners (livestock and game ranchers, horticulturists and farmers), whereas the majority work in the tertiary sector: in finance, import, air transport, and hospitality.