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Legitimation and Paternalism: The Colonial State in Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

John F. Murphy
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Extract

Most contemporary historians of the colonial period in Kenya emphasize the importance of the state. The colonial state, it is argued, ensures the conditions of settler capitalism, provides the infrastructure of transport, credit, marketing and agricultural research, creates by administrative action a supply of African labor, and generally ensures the interests of settler capital against those of an emerging African class of landed capital (Brett, 1973; Leys, 1975; Swainson, 1980). Equally, the theme of tension between the colonial and metropolitan states is a classic one in colonial history, and one which in much of the Kenya debate is seen as refracting tensions and conflicts between the interests of settler capital and the interests of international capital (Swainson, 1980; Cowen, 1982). Yet, despite this emphasis on the colonial state, very little discussion of its distinctive political features has occurred. The economic functions of the colonial state are stressed to the exclusion of questions about the basis of its legitimacy, of its citizenship principles and of its authority. Gavin Kitching (1985) recently pointed out that we have no really adequate theory of the post-colonial state. We are constrained instead to making negative statements to the effect that it is not simply the agency of one particular class force in Kenya, nor is it a unified force but die site of contending and fractured forces. The argument could well be extended to the colonial state.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 55 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

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