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British Administration in The central Nyanza district of Kenya, 1900–60

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Abstract

On 10 June 1894, the British Government, after much hesitation and heart-searching, was finally compelled by circumstances to declare a protectorate over the native kingdom of Buganda. Later in the same year the country between the coast and Buganda on the caravan route up from the coast passed from the control of the Imperial British East Africa Company to that of the Acting Commissioner in Uganda, who was empowered to establish stations in it, under European officers.1

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

1 F.O. to IBEA Coy., 8 Sept. 1894.Google Scholar

2 Hobley, C. W., Kenya—From Chartered Company to Crown Colony, 77–8.Google Scholar

3 Central Nyanza (area c. 1750 sq. miles) is one of the six administrative districts forming the Nyanza Province of Kenya. Out of a total African population of c. 700,000, about 70,000 are Bantu in origin (1962 Kenya Population Census).Google Scholar

4 See Hobley, Kenya, Chap. VII, 109–24.Google Scholar

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8 Eliot, op. cit., 3. He wrote: ‘We have in East Africa the rare experience of dealing with a tabula rasa, an almost untouched and sparsely inhabited country where we can do as we will…. This lessens the difficulty of administration, but it increases responsibility and the need for reflection’.Google Scholar

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11 Ibid.

12 A Location is an administrative unit—a sub-division of the District.Google Scholar

13 The difference between ‘Indirect’ and ‘Direct’ Rule is thus really a difference of degree not of kind. As Lord Hailey has said: ‘The use of these terms conveys the erroneous impression that there are two opposing systems of rule. This is not the case…. All African administrations are dependent to a greater or lesser extent on the use of native authorities as agencies of local rule’. Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa. Report 1940–2, 13.Google Scholar

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15 Quoted in Buell, R., The Native Problem in Africa, I, 363–4.Google Scholar

16 Annual Report, Central Nyanza, 1913, Kisumu.Google Scholar

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19 Ibid. (1905–1906), 100.

20 Ibid. (1922–1923), 16–17.

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23 Political Records, District Archives, Kisumu. Ref. to Chilembwe Rising in Nyasaland —see Shepperson and Price, Independent African.Google Scholar

24 Much of the material incorporated in this paper was collected during field work in 1961 as a Research Fellow of the British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. Mumboism continued to be a force until the late 30's, opposing such things as innoculation against smallpox. I was assured by the few Mumboites I met that there are still at least 500 members of the Cult scattered in Central and South Nyanza.Google Scholar

25 District Annual Report, 1917, Kisumu.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. Cf. ‘The people of Central Kavirondo … helped the British forces in the war in the most practical way possible to them, by making them a present of 3000 goats’. Proceedings of the C.M.S. for Africa and the East, 1922–1923, 16–17.

27 Goldsmith, Ainsworth, 94.Google Scholar

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29 See Groves, C. P., The Planting of Christianity in Africa, IV, 72: ‘After the formation of the Carrier Corps in the East Africa Protectorate a total of 162,578 were recruited …. Of these 23,311 or nearly 15 per cent were known to have died while a further 25,695 were returned as deserted or missing, of whom half might be presumed to have died’.Google Scholar

30 Mitchell, Philip Sir, African Afterthoughts, 48–9.Google Scholar See also Lucas, C. P., The Empire at War, IV, for more figures.Google Scholar

31 Mitchell,Google ScholarIbid., 46.

32 Letter to The Times, 16 April 1918—quoted in Groves, , The Planting of Christianity in Africa, IV, 74–5.Google Scholar

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35 When Lord Moyne visited the District in 1932, he found that only one-sixth of the revenue obtained from the Africans in the District ‘was expended on native services in the District.’ Annual Report, Central Nyanza (1932).Google Scholar

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38 A prominent leader of K.C.A., and later of K.A.U. He was detained during the emergency in Kenya.Google Scholar

39 Annual Report, Central Nyanza (1922).Google Scholar

40 Cf.Ross, Kenya From Within, 87. Civil Case No. 626 of 1922. Chief Justice Sir Jacob Barth's judgment.Google Scholar

41 Cf. Richards, C. G., Archdeacon Owen of Kavirondo, Nairobi, 1314.Google Scholar Also Ross, Kenya From Within, 236.Google Scholar

42 The Native Catholic Union was started in Oct. 1924 with exactly the same objects as the K.T.W.A., which was under C.M.S. auspices.Google Scholar

43 Annual District Report (Kisumu, 1932).Google Scholar

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47 Ibid. 1937.

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52 Unlike the K.C.A. leaders, who remained permanent outsiders, most of the leaders of Piny Owacho had been absorbed into the colonial régime as teachers, pastors, councillors, and civil servants. New leaders who did not depend on the colonial administration for their livelihood were therefore needed in the District.Google Scholar

53 Ker means chiefship or the symbol of chiefship.Google Scholar

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55 K.A.U. had been proscribed on 8 June, 1953, and up to 1955 all African political organizations were prohibited. From 1955, Africans were allowed to form District political organizations.Google Scholar