Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T22:00:30.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

John Lonsdale
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
Bruce Berman
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Ontario
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

By drawing on the current Marxist debate about the nature of the capitalist state, this article argues that the colonial state was obliged to be more interventionist than the mature capitalist state in its attempts to manage the economy, since colonies were distinguished by the way in which they articulated capitalism to local modes of production. This posed severe problems of social control, since the capitalist sector required the preservation of indigenous social institutions while also extracting resources from them. In early colonial Kenya this problem was mitigated by a rough compatibility between the needs of settler capital and the patronage exercised by African chiefs within a peasant sector which was expanded to solve the colonial administration's initial need for peace and revenue. The peasant sector was not destroyed, rather it was represented in the state, which never ceased thereafter to be plagued by the conflicts between the two modes of production over which it presided.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

References

1 Transatlantic collaboration has not proved to be easy. This final draft represents merely an arbitrary caesura in a continuing dialogue of exchanged ideas which we hope to pursue at more illuminating length elsewhere.

2 One of the earliest essays in this enterprise is the Introduction to Kay, G. B., The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar. The project has been carried furthest with regard to South Africa. For an instructive guide to the current state of the argument see Clarke, Simon, ‘Capital, fractions of capital and the State: “Neo-Marxist” analysis of the South African state’, Capital and Class, v (1978), 3277CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Good, Kenneth, ‘Settler colonialism: economic development and Class Formation’, Journal of Modern African Studies, xiv, 4 (1976), 597620CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasizes, as we do, the interventionist nature of the colonial state but without noting the constraints on its action with which we deal below.

3 Foster-Carter, Aidan, ‘The modes of production controversy’, New Left Review, 107 (1978), 4777.Google Scholar

4 Roberts, Andrew, ‘Nyamwezi trade’, in Gray, R. and Birmingham, D., eds., Pre-Colonial African Trade (London, 1970), 3974.Google Scholar

5 Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973)Google Scholar, chs. 4 and 5; Wallerstein, I., ‘The three stages of African involvement in the world economy’, in Gutkind, P. and Wallerstein, I., eds., The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (Beverly Hills & London, 1976)Google Scholar; Munro, J. Forbes, Africa and the International Economy, 1800–1960 (London, 1976), ch. 4Google Scholar; Wrigley, C. C., ‘Neo-mercantile policies and the new imperialism’, in Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A. G., eds., The Imperial Impact (London, 1978), 2034.Google Scholar

6 Iliffe, J., Agricultural Change in Modern Tanganyika (Nairobi, 1971)Google Scholar; Cliffe, L., ‘Rural class formation in East Africa’, Journal of Peasant Studies, iv, ii (1977), 195224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parkin, D., Palms, Wine and Witnesses (London, 1972).Google Scholar

7 Cowen, M. P., ‘Capital and peasant households’ (mimeo., University of Nairobi, 1976), 21.Google Scholar

8 Waller, Richard, ‘The Maasai and the British 1895–1905: the origins of an alliance’, J. Afr. Hist. xvii, iv (1976), 529–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feldman, D. M., ‘Christians and politics: the origins of the Kikuyu Central Association in northern Murang'a 1890–1930’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1979), ch. 2Google Scholar; Spencer, P., ‘Drought and the commitment to growth’, African Affairs, 293 (1974), 419–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lonsdale, J. M., ‘How the people of Kenya spoke for themselves, 1895–1923’ (mimeo., Proceedings of the African Studies Association (U.S.A.), 1976)Google Scholar, extensively available in Ranger, Terence, ‘Growing from the roots: reflections on peasant research in Central and Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, v, i (1978), 128–31.Google Scholar

9 This insight is the particular contribution of Rey, P.-P., Les Alliances de classes (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar, as presented in Foster-Carter, ‘Modes of production controversy’.

10 For helpful guides to the main arguments see Jessop, Bob, ‘Recent theories of the capitalist state’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, i (1977), 353–73Google Scholar. and the editors' Introduction, ‘Towards a materialist theory of the State’, in Holloway, John and Picciotto, Sol, eds., State and Capital, a Marxist Debate (London, 1978), 131.Google Scholar

11 See in particular Hirsch, J., ‘The State apparatus and social reproduction: elements of a theory of the bourgeois State’Google Scholar, in Holloway, and Picciotto, , State and Capital, 57107.Google Scholar

12 For discussions of this relative autonomy of the state, implicit and explicit, see Miliband, R., The State in Capitalist Society (London, 1973)Google Scholar; and Poulantzas, N., Political Power and Social Classes (London, 1973)Google Scholar. For an instance in the early development of relative autonomy see Hay, D., ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’, in Hay, D.et al., Albion's Fatal Tree (London, 1975).Google Scholar

13 But the complexity is a matter of degree; as Anderson, Perry reminds us in Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1974), 22Google Scholar, this combination of different modes of production is to be found within all social formations.

14 Lamb, Geoff, ‘Marxism, access and the State’, Development and Change, vi, ii (1975)Google Scholar, especially pp. 131–2.

15 This schematic presentation is elaborated in later sections of the article.

16 For the distinction between force and power see Luttwak, E. M., The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1976), 195200.Google Scholar

17 Cf. Marks, Shula with Trapido, Stanley, ‘Lord Milner and the South African State’ (mimeo., Cambridge Commonwealth and Overseas History Seminar, 1979), 15.Google Scholar

18 van Zwanenberg, R., ‘Primitive colonial accumulation in Kenya, 1919–1939: a study in the processes and determinants in the development of a Wage Labour force’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, 1971)Google Scholar, chs. 1 and 2; for a fictional portrayal of antagonism between settler and banker, see Ruark, Robert, Something of Value (London, 1955), 25.Google Scholar

19 Salvadori, Max, La Colonisation européenne au Kenya (Paris, 1938)Google Scholar; Meyer, F. V., Britain's Colonies in World Trade (London, 1948)Google Scholar; Colonial Office minute by Melville, E., 10 June 1940Google Scholar, on Report of Delegation from the East African Territories: CO.533/518/38103/2B.

20 By Douglas Rimmer, in his review article on L. H. Gann and P. Duignan, eds., The Economics of Colonialism, in j. Afr. Hist., XIX, ii (1978), 269.Google Scholar

21 Robinson, Ronald, ‘Non-European foundations of European imperialism: sketch for a theory of collaboration’, in Owen, R. and Sutcliffe, B., eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1972), 117–40Google Scholar; Kiwanuka, M. Semakula, ‘Colonial policies and administrations in Africa: the myths of the contrasts’, African Historical Studies, iii, ii (1970).Google Scholar

22 Low, D. A., ‘Empire and social engineering’, in his Lion Rampant: Essays in the Study of British Imperialism (London, 1973), 5370.Google Scholar

23 Leys, Norman, Kenya (London, 1924)Google Scholar; Ross, W. McGregor, Kenya from Within (London, 1927)Google Scholar. For discussion of their role see Wylie, Diana, ‘Confrontation over Kenya: the Colonial Office and its critics, 1918–1940’, J. Afr. Hist., xviii, iii (1977) 427–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Leys, , Kenya, 318Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

25 Mungeam, G. H., British Rule in Kenya, 1895–1912 (Oxford, 1966), 281Google Scholar; Sorrenson, M. P. K., Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (Nairobi, 1968), 241.Google Scholar

26 Cashmore, T. H. R., ‘Studies in District Administration in the East Africa Protectorate, 1895–1918’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1965), 83–7Google Scholar, 118–19.

27 C. C. Wrigley, ‘Kenya: the patterns of economic life, 1902–1945’, and Low, D. A., ‘British East Africa: the establishment of British rule’, in Harlow, V. and Chilver, E. M., with Smith, A., eds., History of East Africa, ii (Oxford, 1965), 209–64Google Scholar and 1–56 respectively.

28 Clayton, A. and Savage, D. C., Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (London, 1974).Google Scholar

29 Ghai, Y. P. and McAuslan, J. P. W. B., Public Law and Political Change in Kenya (Nairobi, 1970).Google Scholar

30 A start has been made in Morris, H. F. and Read, J. S., Indirect Rule and the Search for Justice (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar

31 Munro, J. Forbes, Colonial Rule and the Kamba (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; Tignor, R. L., The Colonial Transformation of Kenya (Princeton, 1976).Google Scholar

32 Wolff, R. D., The Economics of Colonialism (New Haven and London, 1974)Google Scholar; Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa (London, 1973).Google Scholar

33 R. Palmer's conclusion with regard to Shona, Ndebele and Kikuyu agriculture in the 1930s, in Palmer, R. and Parsons, N., eds., The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (London, 1977), 243.Google Scholar

34 At current prices African export earnings tripled from 1922 to 1929, from £180,000 to £543,000; and, after a slump to £214,000 in 1931, again more than doubled, to £488,000, by 1940. See tables in Salvadori, , Colonisation européene, 129Google Scholar; Spencer, I. R. G., ‘The development of production and trade in the reserve areas of Kenya, 1895–1929’ (Ph.D. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1975), 367Google Scholar; P. Mosley, ‘Agricultural development and government policy in settler economies: the case of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900–1960’ (forthcoming article,.cited with permission). That peasant export values could have increased still more rapidly without settler dominance is clear, especially if the prohibition on African coffee had been lifted before 1933; but the existing literature concentrates too gloomily on the relative decline in African exports compared with settler export production.

35 From a large literature see Waller, R. D., ‘The Lords of East Africa: the Maasai in the mid-nineteenth century, c. 1840–1885’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Muriuki, G., A History of the Kikuyu, 1500–1900 (Nairobi, 1974)Google Scholar; Hay, M., ‘Local trade and ethnicity in western Kenya’, African Economic History Review, ii, i (1975), 712CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lonsdale, J., ‘When did the Gusii (or any other group) become a tribe?’, Kenya Hist. Rev., v, i (1977), 123–33Google Scholar; Cowen, , ‘Capital and peasant households’, 1720Google Scholar; Munro, , Kamba, 730Google Scholar; Marris, P. and Somerset, A., “African Businessmen’, Kenya Hist. Rev., v, i (1977), 123–33Google Scholar; Cowen, , ‘Capital and peasant households’, 1720Google Scholar; Munro, , Kamba, 730Google Scholar; Marris, P. and Somerset, A., African Businessmen (London, 1971), 2547.Google Scholar

36 For the lack of Foreign Office policy see Mungeam, , British Rule, 33Google Scholar, 43, 68–72; and for the poor quality of many early officials, Meinertzhagen, R., Kenya Diary, 1902–1906 (London, 1957), 132Google Scholar; Clayton, and Savage, , Government and Labour, 27Google Scholar. For the railway, see Uzoigwe, G. N., ‘The Mombasa-Victoria railway, 1890–1902: imperial necessity, humanitarian venture, or economic imperialism?’, Kenya Hist. Rev., iv (1976), 1134.Google Scholar

37 Eliot, (in fact Commissioner) in 1904Google Scholar, Girouard in 1912.

38 Sorrenson, , Origins, 2930Google Scholar; Mungeam, , British Rule, 132Google Scholar; Wolff, , Economics of Colonialism, 50.Google Scholar

39 Hyam, R., Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905–1908 (London, 1968), ch. 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 For the changing patterns of recruitment to the administration, see Berman, B. J., ‘Administration and Politics in Colonial Kenya’ (Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1974), ch. 2.Google Scholar

41 For the connexions between the politics of conquest and early district administration, see Waller, ‘Maasai and British’; Lonsdale, J. M., ‘The politics of conquest: the British in Western Kenya, 1894–1908’, Historical Journal, xx, iv (1977), 841–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Low, ‘British East Africa’; Munro, Kamba, parts 1 and 2; Tignor, , Colonial Transformation, chs. 16Google Scholar; Cashmore, ‘District administration’; Rogers, P., ‘The British and the Kikuyu, 1890–1905: a re-assessment’, J. Afr. Hist., 20 (1979), 255–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomason, M. A., ‘Little Tin Gods: the District Officer in British East Africa’, Albion, vii, ii (1975), 145–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spencer, ‘Production and trade’; Lonsdale, ‘People of Kenya’; Feldman, , ‘Christians and polities’, ch. 1.Google Scholar

42 It was in the 1890s, according to missionary recollection, that the term Mau Mau was first coined to described a gang of bandits in southern Kikuyu; see Church of Scotland Foreign Missions Committee, Mau Mau and the Church (mimeo., Edinburgh, Feb. 1953), 5.Google Scholar

43 Hobley, C. W., Kenya from Chartered Company to Crown Colony (London, 1929), 124Google Scholar; hut tax proportions of revenue calculated from figures given in Mungeam, British Rule.

44 For these early chiefs see Ogot, B. A., ‘British administration in the Central Nyanza District of Kenya, 1900’, J. Afr. Hist., iv, ii (1963), 249–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Atieno-Odhiambo, E., ‘Some reflections on African initiative in early colonial Kenya’, East Africa J., viii, vi (1971), 30–6Google Scholar; Ochieng, W. R., ‘Colonial African chiefs: were they primarily self-seeking scoundrels?’Google Scholar, in Ogot, B. A., ed., Politics and Nationalism in Colonial Kenya, East Africa J., viii, vi (1971), 30–6Google Scholar; Ochieng, W. R., ‘Colonial African chiefs: were they primarily self-seeking scoundrels?’, in Ogot, B. A., ed., Politics and Nationalism in Colonial Kenya (Nairobi, 1972), 4670.Google Scholar

45 Mungeam, , British Rule, 220–1Google Scholar; for Commissioner Eliot's unguarded comment, see Sorrenson, , Origins, 76.Google Scholar

46 Nyanza's export figures from the Provincial Annual Report, 1910–11; Reed, H., ‘Cotton growing in Central Nyanza, Kenya, 1901–1939’ (Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1975), 23–6Google Scholar; Tosh, John, ‘Lango agriculture during the early colonial period’, J. Afr. Hist., XIX, iii (1978), 426–8Google Scholar, analyses an early failure with cotton almost exactly parallel to Nyanza's, not least in the African preference for surplus productions of sesame, an oil-seed for which there was a world market (if not with British industry) as well as a domestic use in food preparation.

47 For land policies see Sorrenson, Origins; Ghai, and McAuslan, , Public Law, 2530Google Scholar, 79–83; Redley, M. G., ‘The politics of a predicament: the white community in Kenya, 1918–1932’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976), ch. 2Google Scholar; Weisbord, R. G., African Zion (Philadelphia, 1968), chs. 46.Google Scholar

48 To quote a local bank manager in 1914: see Redley, , ‘Predicament’, 83.Google Scholar

49 For Lord Delamere's expensive pioneering, see Huxley, Elspeth, White Man's Country, i (second edition, London, 1953)Google Scholar, chs. 7 and 8; and for the state's assistance to agriculture, Wolff, , Economics of Colonialism, ch. 4.Google Scholar

50 Ibid. 55.

51 Berman, , ‘Administration and polities’, ch. 4.Google Scholar

52 Redley, , ‘Predicament’, passimGoogle Scholar; Clayton, and Savage, , Government and Labour, chs. 47.Google Scholar

53 Wolff, , Economics of Colonialism, 74.Google Scholar

54 Redley, ‘Predicament’, passim.

55 van Zwanenberg, R., Colonialism and Labour in Kenya, 1919–1939 (Nairobi, 1975).Google Scholar

56 Trapido, S., ‘Landlord and Tenant in a Colonial Economy: the Transvaal 1880–1910’, Journal of Southern African Studies, V, i (1978), 2658CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. K. Rennie, ‘White farmers, Black tenants and Landlord legislation: Southern Rhodesia 1890–1930’, Ibid. 86–98; Morris, M. L., ‘The development of capitalism in South African agriculture’, Economy & Society, v (1976), 292343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Furedi, F., ‘The social composition of the Mau Mau movement in the White Highlands’, J. Peasant Studies, i, iv (1974), 490.Google Scholar

58 Wrigley, , ‘Patterns of economic life’, 229.Google Scholar

59 But see Mungeam, , British Rule, 283–5Google Scholar, for the first inklings.

60 Low, , ‘British East Africa’, 33–4Google Scholar; Wrigley, , ‘Patterns of economic life’, 229Google Scholar; Feldman, , ‘Christians and Politics’, 53–5Google Scholar; Uchendu, V. and Anthony, K., Field Study of Agricultural Change: Kisii District, Kenya (Stanford, 1969), 47.Google Scholar

61 The fullest account of the Protectorate's labour policies is in Clayton, A. H. le Q., ‘Labour in the East Africa Protectorate, 1895–1918’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of St Andrews, 1971)Google Scholar, now summarized in Clayton, and Savage, , Government and Labour, chs. 13Google Scholar; see also Leys, , Kenya, ch. 8Google Scholar; Ross, , Kenya from Within, ch. 6Google Scholar; Huxley, , White Man's Country, i, 214–36Google Scholar, 274–6, for a settler view; Dilley, M. R., British Policy in Kenya Colony (second edition, London, 1966), part IV, ch. IGoogle Scholar; van Zwanenberg, R., Colonialism and Labour, ch. VIIGoogle Scholar. The indispensable primary source for the views of officials, Africans and settlers is Native Labour Commission, 1912–13: Evidence and Report, (Govt. printer, Nairobi, n.d.), usefully summarized in Clayton, & Savage, , Government and Labour, 5562.Google Scholar

62 Ross, W. McGregor to Commissioner for Public Works, 15 Oct. 1908Google Scholar: Ross papers, privately held.

63 Huxley, E., No Easy Way: a History of the Kenya Farmers' Association and Unga Ltd. (Nairobi, 1957), 4.Google Scholar

64 As in Wolff, , Economics of Colonialism, ch. 5.Google Scholar

65 In the words of Governor Belfield, 1913, quoted in Clayton, and Savage, , Government and Labour, 41.Google Scholar

66 In 1912 John Ainsworth calculated that Nyanza‘s agricultural exports represented 1¼ million headload-days per annum, Nyanza Province Annual Report (1911–12), 55.

67 The Kipsigis indeed used the same term to describe both cattle raids and wage-labour: Orchardson, I. Q., ‘Some traits of the Kipsigis in relation to their contacts with Europeans’, Africa, iv, 4 (1931), 468.Google Scholar

68 Native Labour Commission 1912–13, 135, evidence of Provincial Commissioner Ainsworth.

69 For the inflationary tendencies of monetization see Bohannan, P., ‘The impact of money on an African subsistence economy’, Journal of Economic History, xix, iv (1959), 491503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wrigley, , ‘Patterns of economic life’, 226.Google Scholar

70 Cf. Foster-Carter, ‘Modes of production controversy’. For case studies, see Tignor, R. L., ‘Colonial chiefs in chiefless societies’, J. Modern African Studies, ix, iii (1971), 339–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tosh, J., ‘Colonial chiefs in a stateless society: a case-study from northern Uganda’, J. Afr. Hist., xiv, iii (1973), 473–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 For squatter motives see Land Settlement Commission, British East Africa (Nairobi, 1919), 15Google Scholar, 17, 25; Kershaw, G., ‘The land is the people: a study of social organization in historical perspective’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1972), 100–1Google Scholar; Furedi, F., ‘The Kikuyu squatters in the rift valley, 1918–1929’, in Ogot, B. A., ed., Hadith 5: Economic and Social History of East Africa (Nairobi, 1975), 177–94Google Scholar; R. M. Wambaa and K. King, ‘The political economy of the Rift Valley: a squatter perspective’, Ibid. 195–217. By the 1940s the squatters would seek ‘Land and freedom’ by other means, in the Mau Mau movement, when the increased capitalization of settler farming required that they be transformed from tenants to labourers.

72 For officials' cries of alarm see Cashmore, ‘District Administration’, 97; Hodges, G. W. T., ‘African responses to European rule in Kenya to 1914’, in Ogot, B. A., ed., Hadith 3 (Nairobi, 1971), 95Google Scholar; Tignor, , Colonial Transformation, 106Google Scholar; Munro, , Kamba, 92–3.Google Scholar

73 Governor Girouard, E. P. C., Memoranda for Provincial and District Commissioners (Nairobi, 1910), 6.Google Scholar

74 Hyam, , Elgin and Churchill, 411.Google Scholar

75 Sorrenson, , Origins, chs. 13 and 15Google Scholar

76 Clayton, and Savage, , Government and Labour, 63.Google Scholar

77 Cynthia Brantley, The Giriama and British Colonialism in Kenya: a Study in Resiliency and Rebellion, 1800–1920 (forthcoming).

78 We hope to follow up this point at greater length elsewhere.

79 These internal conflicts in the state are discussed in Berman, B. J., Control and Crisis in the Colonial State (Philadelphia, forthcoming).Google Scholar

80 Leys, Colin, Underdevelopment in Kenya (London, 1975), 2840.Google Scholar

81 Cf. von Freyhold, M., ‘The post-colonial state and its Tanzanian version’, Review of African Political Economy, viii (1977), 79Google Scholar. See also Iliffe, J., A Modern History of Tanganyika (London, 1979), ch. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the Kenya government's fear of pan-tribal consciousness in 1917, see Lonsdale, J. M., ‘Some origins of nationalism in East Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., ix, i (1968), 132 n.Google Scholar

82 The exercise of social control in early Nairobi is a subject on which we await the findings of Frederick Cooper, Carla Glassman, B. A. Ogot and Luise White.

83 Wallerstein, , ‘Stages of African involvement’, 41.Google Scholar

84 Cf. Ehrlich, C., ‘Some social and economic implications of paternalism in Uganda’, J. Afr. Hist., iv, 11 (1963), 275–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and as implied in Bauer, P. T. and Yamey, B. S., ‘The economics of marketing reform’, Journal of Political Economy, lxii, iii (1954), 210–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar