In the preface to his memorandum, Devonshire states:
The following memorandum summarises the history of the Indian question in the Kenya Colony and Protectorate and sets out the general policy which has been laid down by His Majesty's Government, together with the decisions which they have taken on the practical points at issue. [42]
In his analysis of that history Devonshire outlines some of the factors which had brought about the British government's desire to readdress (once more) the issue of the Indian community's status in Kenya. Firstly, he mentions the "recent change in the constitutional and political position of India." [43] This can best be understood as a reference to the 1919 Government of India Act which formalised the promises made to the Indian nationalists by Edwin Montagu, bringing about "the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions." [44] The Imperial Conference of 1921 had also considered the "more general position of Indians in the Empire," [45] concluding that:
there is an incongruity between the position of India as an equal member of the British Empire and the existence of disabilities upon British Indians lawfully domiciled in some other parts of the Empire. [46]
The Conference further concluded that "it is desirable that the rights of such Indians to citizenship should be recognised." [47] These declarations, made at the `high table' of imperial discussion, surely inform any publicly-stated, morally-based judgements made by the imperial government on the position of Indians in Kenya. The second major historical element identified by Devonshire is that of land. He suggests that this is the sphere of Kenyan colonial life that brought Europeans and Indians into conflict, and that the core of this conflict has been the `White Highlands' policy. [48] The third element that Devonshire highlights are Indian attempts to gain equal representation on Kenya's Legislative Council.
In assessing the progress that has been made on resolving these issues, Devonshire tends to slide rather blandly over the disagreements that had thwarted any resolution. For example, he says that "It became obvious that the policy proposed in the Wood-Winterton report would not satisfy parties in Kenya." [49] The reality that this anodyne statement conceals is that elements among the Europeans in Kenya had been "manifestly preparing for rebellion" [50] in response to the Wood-Winterton proposals and that the Governor, Coryndon, had been aware that any attempt to impose these reforms could have resulted in serious violence. Thus one interpretation of some of Devonshire's memorandum could be that the serious issues of de facto European settler dominance and the invidious position of the Colonial government were masked by cautious language and a focus on the more malleable question of somewhat abstract rights. This issue will be returned to later.
The proposals which Devonshire put forward to reconcile the differing parties were predicated on the principle of `Native Paramountcy'. This replaced the notion of Europeans and Indians contending for dominance (or parity) in Kenya with the ideal of African interests taking precedence over any minority interest:
the interests of the African natives must be paramount, and...when...those interests and the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail. [51]
At the same time, however,
Obviously the interests of the other communities, European, Indian or Arab, must severally be safeguarded. [52]
Also,
there will be no drastic action or reversal of measures...the result of which might be to destroy or impair the existing interests of those who have already settled in Kenya. [53]
These excerpts suggest, at face value, that the metropolitan government was not prepared to countenance any fundamental changes which might undermine the status quo. However, lest this be interpreted as a recognition of European settler dominance and carte blanche, Devonshire adds a caveat:
in the administration of Kenya His Majesty's Government regard themselves as exercising a trust on behalf of the African population, and they are unable to delegate or share this trust....It is not necessary to attempt to elaborate this position. [54]
This can be seen as a reassertion of the British government's determination to govern, and to not be intimidated or manoeuvred by the European settlers. Thus Devonshire's memorandum is treading a delicate path between the rights and interests of the different communities in Kenya, balancing the needs of the Colonial and the metropolitan governments.
This general statement of policy, which leaves behind the impression of some indeterminacy about how the ideals espoused are to be realised (witness the reluctance to elaborate on the relationship between the inalienable sovereignty of the imperial government and established colonial practices), is followed by sections which discuss constitutional evolution, political representation, segregation, immigration, and the reservation of the White Highlands. In all of these areas, I suggest, the Devonshire conclusions did not offer any substantive changes to the practices already in place. [55] At this stage I will refrain from further discussion of the Devonshire Declaration (it will be revisited later) and observe that the statement of principles that it contained have probably been more well-marked than its practical provisions. The reasons for this and the larger contexts that framed the Devonshire Declaration's composition will be discussed in sections IV - VII below. In the next section I will discuss the broad political and economic aspects of Kenyan development in the years before 1923.
The `western' political arrangements in east Africa had always been a somewhat tangled web, ever since the appointment of the first British consul to Zanzibar in 1840. This man, Atkins Hamerton, was
answerable to the Foreign Office in London in his consular capacity and to the Government of Bombay as agent of the East India Company's in Said ibn Sultan's...dominions. [56]
The `dual role' of the consul prefigured the often contradictory imperatives that were to inform east African political developments for the next century. In the same way that the British empire can be interpreted as having `formal' and `informal' components, so the government of east Africa - in its various guises - can be seen to consist, firstly, of the formally constituted machinery of government and, secondly, of the political forces that acted from within and from without on that machinery. In this section these formal and informal elements will be discussed, followed by an analysis of the interrelationships between the political and the economic spheres.
The assumption that the east African political life started with the creation of the Imperial British East Africa Company's administrative machine in 1888 rests on a narrow definition of `politics' and misses the point that African `polities' - "the organized allocation and exercise of authority" [57] - had existed for centuries. However, for the purposes of this study, analysis will focus on the post-1888 political sphere, whilst recognising - as Burke suggests [58] - that the discontinuity between the pre-European polities and those that followed is not necessarily total.
The IBEAC, from its inception, acted as an agent for the British government, which was reluctant to commit money or manpower on the east African mainland. The company combined its own speculative activities centred on ivory and the development of the Highlands [59] with a mission to acquire territory in the British sphere on "the understanding that `the hearty co-operation and support of Her Majesty's Government should be accorded.'" [60] The administration of the existing territory and any that was added rested on finding amongst the native Africans groups who would be willing to act as clients and allies in security and administration. [61] Thus, from an early stage, the `thin white line' of the state sought friendly or compliant clients to help establish order and stability in the colonised areas. This pattern - with the colonial state seeking to create stability through relationships with other social and political groups - was to become a recurrent motif.
Under the auspices of the Foreign Office from 1895 to 1905, political development in Kenya remained essentially centralised and driven by the strategic and diplomatic priorities of politicians and diplomats in London, [62] the minimal settler presence too weak to influence the colonial government. As for the officials `on the spot', these were "generally old [Imperial British East Africa] Company hands, of whom the Foreign Office thought little. [63] Indeed, it has been strongly argued that the colonial administration of officials and institutions established in the early years of colonisation was exclusively a state enterprise:
the British colonial system as exemplified in East Africa probably represented the most advanced working form of state ownership and control in the world. The state was supreme and its servants...were absolute dictators of the country's economic life.
All actual or potential sources of wealth...belonged to the state. All forms of transport...were state-built and state-owned....Laws were made and amended by simple proclamation of the...Governor and behind him the Secretary of State [in London]. [64]
Thus, in 1905, the colonial government was "little more than an executive council of heads of departments presided over by the Governor". [65] This centralised political arrangement, where the government wielded its power and authority directly, was to be fundamentally undermined with the expansion of the white settler community.
The European settler community in east Africa had grown slowly: By 1901, there were only 13 English settlers, although their disproportionate influence was already being suggested by the fact that they had amassed 220, 000 acres of land between them by 1904. [66] The expansion of the settler community was actively encouraged from the early 1900s onwards by the Foreign Office, and subsequently by the Colonial Office, the latter being a department "actively concerned with tropical development for metropolitan needs." [67] Even before the Colonial Office had assumed administrative responsibility, the colonial state had begun to encourage European - and Indian - immigration. Particularly influential in these respects was Commissioner Sir Charles Eliot, who arrived in the Protectorate in 1901. Among the measures that he enacted to assist settlement were the creation of agricultural and veterinary departments, the remission of customs duties on agricultural implements and seeds, and the reduction of transport rates. Additionally, he proposed to amend land regulations so that free grants of land could be made to settlers (although this was vetoed by the British Treasury). [68] Eliot saw the East African Highlands as a "valuable, if underdeveloped imperial estate" [69] which he, and his successors, felt a duty to develop.
The instruments of development in East Africa were to be the settlers, and their increasing numbers - as well as the nature of this group's composition - was to shape political and economic development in important ways. The first major influx of white settlers followed the Boer war. [70] After 1902, repelled from South Africa by economic depression, British South Africans sought new opportunities in East Africa, attracted by promises of cheap land and the expectation that here they would find "no `nonsense' about equal rights for black and white." [71] This initial flow of people was buttressed by a further South African ingress of Boer `irreconcilables' who felt that the war had merely reinforced the dominant position of the mining magnates' in their own country. These small-scale farmers and settlers were much to the liking of the colonial government, since they fitted the Colonial Office's preference for "active development by owner occupiers." [72] In this respect they were preferable to the `big men' who would suck in state subsidies and who would not be as amenable to state control.
Another important group of settlers were the small British contingent. They consisted of an aristocratic rump - Lords Delamere and Hindlip, for example - and a collection of `Gentleman Adventurers' such as Major E. S. Grogan. Despite their small numbers (see page 23 above), "their wealth and social standing enabled them to exert an influence in politics and society that was out of all proportion to their number. [73]
It would be wrong, however, to assume that because the colonial authorities encouraged and welcomed the influx of European settlers, their interests were necessarily identical. In fact, the settlers' self-image precluded any automatically comfortable collusion between them and the colonial government. Many of the South African contingent saw themselves as pioneers whose aim was to carve out a new country, [74] a country which would develop on the South African model, with self-government and white domination. The English [sic] settler, according to Elspeth Huxley, was "more of an individualist than most," [75] and sought to get away from "the restrictions and conventions of English life." [76] Whatever the latitude given to the settlers, neither self-government nor libertarianism were official policy. However, the settlers perceived the constitutional changes of 1907 as the first step towards achieving self-government. These changes implemented the machinery of `Crown Colony' government, where the colony's Governor oversaw and consulted with an Executive and Legislative Councils. [77] Another stipulation of the new constitution saw the creation of an entitlement for three nominated "non-official Europeans" [78] to sit on the Legislative Council. These nominees were there at the invitation of the Governor, and their inclusion can be seen as reflecting the fact that the settlers were already carrying a gathering weight in political life.
This ex post facto recognition of the settlers' importance and of the need to propitiate them was an outgrowth of the economic development of East Africa. Commissioner Eliot's propensity to encourage European settlers by providing them with land has already been alluded to (see page 23 above). Land was what the settlers required, and land was to be one of the major issues around which economic and political discourse would revolve. Eliot, from the outset, subordinated traditional African land rights - and indeed any practical considerations of the African's need for land - to the interests of the Europeans. [79] In this, he was bolstered by the `east African (Lands) Order in Council' of 1901, [80] which established Crown Control over land allocation in the Protectorate. In his keenness to facilitate European settlement, Eliot overrode the caution of other colonial officials, ignored African land-rights, and incurred the displeasure of Sir Clement Hill, the Superintendent of African Protectorates at the Foreign Office. The patterns of land alienation established in this early period - when European land applications rose from 117 in 1903 to 300 in 1904 [81] - were expanded by the construction of the railway, which brought more and more land within reach of the administration and provided further opportunities for settlement and development. Furthermore, the expense of the railway necessitated the expansion of "commerce, taxation and development." [82]
The expanding acreage of land under European settlement and the estate production that developed there needed labour to work it and make it viable. For the settler, the ideal labour force was the African native, and a system of labour developed over time which helped to establish the `plural society' in East Africa and to ossify the dominant settler perceptions of Africans as inferior `work-fodder'. [83] The settlers required regular, reliable labour, a concept which was largely alien to the Africans in the early years of settlement. In order to satisfy these labour requirements and guarantee the settler production that they saw as important to the colonial economy, the colonial government passed a series of laws and circulars which circumscribed working practices and the relationships between employers and employees. These legal measures were coupled to the more brutal techniques of control and motivation adopted by the settlers. Labour then, before 1914, was drawn from "closely-administered, efficiently-taxed African reserves" [84] and supplied to subsidised, white-settled areas of protected economic development. [85] This labour mainly took the form of, firstly, `compulsory labour,' where local chiefs were bound under penalty to supply a set number of workers at a set rate of pay; and, secondly and most importantly, `voluntary contractual labour'. This mode of employment, although `voluntary' in law, became in practice "coercive to the point of oppression." [86]
Again, it would be a mistake to see the colonial government and the settlers working `hand in hand' to achieve these ends. Indeed, although it is apparent that there was some commonality of interests - in developing the economy, for example - there were clearly tensions and disagreements between the state and the settlers. As Lonsdale and Berman suggest, the colonial state was not merely the `servant of capital': it also had the obligation to act as "the guarantor of social order." [87] Where this imperative was threatened by the disruptive abuse of the labour laws, there was bound to be the potential for conflict between the state and the settlers. For example, Lord Delamere and another Legislative Council nominee were suspended after "demonstrations of insulting and disorderly character" [88] against Governor Sir James Hayes Sadler's labour policies. Also, a Colonists' Association resolution of 1908 asserted that the impression was being given that "the government is against the settler and for the native" [89] in respect of enforcing labour policy. It is also interesting to note that Sir Charles Eliot, despite his early championing of the settlers' immigration, was an unpopular figure with the settlers: he "offended local snobs" [90] by his failure to entertain lavishly at Government House, he did not mix in settler society, and he was perceived as tardy in his settlement of land claims. [91] The fact that he only became popular with them when he resigned as the result of conflicts with his superior, Sir Clement Hill, indicates the degree of antipathy that the settlers, on the whole, felt for their remote overseers. [92]
These examples reflect the plethora of conflicts which emerged before 1914 between the settlers and the colonial state. However, it would be fair to say that in the long-run the interests of the settlers often won out because of their economic significance and the local pressure that they were able to bring on the colonial government. The colonial government,
uncomfortably situated between the employer [that is, the settler] and the Colonial Office,...tried awkwardly to ride the storms....Their Royal instructions, their oaths, their traditions, enjoined them to protect the possessions and liberties of the natives of the territory. But for many years the realities of power in colonial Kenya lay elsewhere...The Colonial Office...was far away; the European settlers were at [the] front door. [93]
Thus the political and economic development of East Africa was deeply rooted in the practical strength of the settlers and in the influence that they were able to bring to bear on the colonial government. This manifested itself before 1914 in oppressive and coercive labour laws and in the Europeans' appropriation of the best land for themselves, which they then protected from incursion by other groups - especially Indians - through legal and administrative measures.
These land and labour practices and the settler attitudes that they embodied were to provide the backdrop for increasingly oppressive measures to coerce labour during the war years, when the value of East Africa's raw materials to the British war economy outweighed any humanitarian considerations for the well-being of African natives. Thus the "political and economic demands of the European settlers [which] greatly increased in scope and pressure" [94] during 1914 - 1918 were based on a series of assumptions about rights and development modes which had already achieved a position of domination in East African legislation and practice. This means that the social, economic, and political pressures which emerged after 1918 had their roots in the pre-war soil of de facto European settler domination, and, therefore, in this same set of assumptions. The next section will discuss how these assumptions fitted in with broader philosophies and strategies of imperial development.
[42] Cmd. 1922, op. cit., p. 3
[43] ibid., p. 4
[44] Edwin Montagu, cited in Bernard Porter, op. cit., p. 246
[45] Cmd. 1922, op. cit., p. 6
[46] ibid.
[47] ibid.
[48] ibid., pp. 6 - 9
[49] ibid., p. 9
[50] Gregory, op. cit., p. 228
[51] Cmd. 1922, op. cit., p. 10
[52] ibid.
[53] ibid.
[54] ibid., my italics
[55] see Cmd. 1922, op. cit., pp. 10 - 18
[56] Oliver and Mathew, op. cit., p. 229
[57] Fred G. Burke, Political Evolution in Kenya, in Stanley Diamond and Fred G. Burke (eds.), The Transformation of East Africa (Basic Books, 1966), p. 185
[58] ibid., passim.
[59] see George J. Moutafakis, The Colonial Heritage of East Africa, in Diamond and Burke, op. cit., pp. 56 - 8
[60] W. McGregor Ross, Kenya from Within: a Short Political History (Frank Cass, 1968), p. 34
[61] see Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Book One: State and Class (James Currey, 1992), passim.
[62] see Sorrenson, op. cit., pp. 19 - 21
[63] John Lonsdale and Bruce Berman, The Colonial State in Kenya 1895 - 1914, in Journal of African History 20 (1979), p. 495
[64] Elspeth Huxley, White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya: Volume One 1870 - 1914 (Chatto and Windus, 1953), pp. 181 - 2
[65] Burke, Political Evolution in Kenya, p.202
[66] ibid., p. 201
[67] Lonsdale and Berman, The Colonial State in Kenya 1895 - 1914, p. 496
[68] Sorrenson, op. cit., pp. 61 - 4
[69] ibid., p. 61
[70] for the following, see Sorrenson, op. cit., pp. 65 - 80
[71] ibid., p. 68
[72] Lonsdale and Berman, The Colonial State in Kenya 1895 - 1914, p. 498
[73] Sorrenson, op. cit., p. 67
[74] Sorrenson, op. cit., p. 67
[75] Huxley, White Man's Country, p. 183
[76] ibid.
[77] Sorrenson, op. cit., pp. 99 - 100
[78] McGregor Ross, op. cit., p. 169
[79] see Sorrenson, op. cit., p. 76
[80] Burke, Political Evolution in Kenya, p. 99
[81] Sorrenson, p. 69
[82] Burke, Political Evolution in Kenya, p. 99
[83] the following account draws heavily on Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya
1895 - 1963
[84] ibid., p. 65
[85] ibid.
[86] Clayton and Savage, op. cit., p. xvii
[87] Lonsdale and Berman, The Colonial State in Kenya 1895 - 1914, p. 490
[88] HMSO, Cd. 4122 -Correspondence Relating to Affairs in the East Africa Protectorate (HMSO, 1908), p. 2
[89] ibid., p. 4
[90] Sorrenson, op. cit., p. 80
[91] ibid.
[92] ibid.
[93] Clayton and Savage, op. cit., p. xvi
[94] ibid., p. 81