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The Kedong Massacre and the Dick Affair: A Problem in the Early Colonial Historiography of East Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Robert Maxon  and
David Javersak
Robert Maxon
Affiliation:
West Virginia University
David Javersak
Affiliation:
West Liberty State College
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Extract

On the morning of 25 November 1895 Maasai fighting men slaughtered hundreds of Kikuyu and Swahili caravan porters and askari in the Kedong Valley of Kenya (then in the Uganda Protectorate); the carnage caused one European to describe the area as the “Valley of Death.” The next day Andrew Dick, a British trader formerly with the Imperial British East Africa Company, learned of the massacre and resolved to avenge it. In a fierce counter-attack, Dick killed at least one hundred Maasai before being put to death himself.

While they were dramatic events, the Kedong Massacre and the Dick Affair are of far less significance from the perspective of the 1980s than during the colonial period. They were without question also much less important than was often assumed in bringing about amicable relations between the Maasai and the British. However, the concern of this paper will be with the varying accounts of these incidents that are available to the historian today, and the problems of the sources of the early colonial history of East Africa that are put in somewhat depressing perspective by the fact that, as Charles Miller has remarked, “nearly every individual writing about the 1890s has his own version of the incidents.” Many of these versions, often accepted as independent sources, have been adopted from the accounts of others. Through comparison of accounts one can use internal evidence to suggest an individual author's unacknowledged sources and in some cases trace the “genealogy” of the account. At the risk of further complicating the picture, we will attempt to analyze the historiography of the incidents and suggest that scholars and popular writers have largely overlooked or ignored one important account of the massacre and its aftermath.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 8 , 1981 , pp. 261 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1981

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References

NOTES

1. Jackson, Frederick, Early Days in East Africa (London, 1930), 291.Google Scholar

2. Among those who have given considerable significance to these events and the settlement reached with the Maasai by British officials are Hill, M.F., Permanent Way (Nairobi, 1961), 144 Google Scholar; Mungeam, G.H., British Rule in Kenya 1895-1912 (Oxford, 1966), 41 Google Scholar; Low, D.A., “British East Africa: The Establishment of British Rule, 1895-1912” in Harlow, V. and Chilver, E.M., eds., History of East Africa (Oxford, 1965), 2:14 Google Scholar; Macphee, A. Marshall, Kenya (New York, 1968), 44 Google Scholar; Sorrenson, M.P.K., Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (Nairobi, 1968), 276 Google Scholar; and Ainsworth, John, “The Tribes of Ukamba, Their History and Customs,” East Africa Quarterly (April-June, 1905), 408.Google Scholar

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5. Jackson, , Early Days, 290.Google Scholar When historians once again have access to the archives in Uganda, they may find more information than that provided by Jackson.

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8. See Maxon, R.M., “John Ainsworth and Agricultural Innovation in Kenya,” Kenya Historical Review, 1(1973), 154–55Google Scholar; Ainsworth, , “The Tribes of Ukamba,” 405–13Google Scholar; Britain, Great, Reports Relating to the Administration of the East Africa Protectorate, Cd. 2740 (1905).Google Scholar

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17. Ibid., 90, 195.

18. Diary, Ainsworth's, Sub 27 November 1895, Rhodes House Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

19. Moreover, there exist some sources relevant to the incidents not included in this paper, for example E.J. Russell's Diary, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, and an account by Baron de Romans cited by Matson, , Nandi Resistance, 372.Google Scholar

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., Sub 29 November 1895.

22. Ainsworth to Hardinge, 3 December 1895, F.O. 107/39. PRO, London.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 23 December 1895, F.O. 107/49.

26. Diary, Ainsworth's, Sub 28 December 1895.Google Scholar

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., Sub 8 January 1896; Ainsworth to Hardinge, 14 January 1896, F.O. 107/49.

31. Goldsmith, , John Ainsworth, 29.Google Scholar

32. Diary, Ainsworth's, Sub 8 January 1896.Google Scholar

33. Ainsworth to Hardinge, 14 January 1896. F.O. 107/49.